At the GigaOm Big Data conference this week, Marc Parrish of Barnes & Noble predicted the publishing business will "totally shift" to electronic formats over the next 24 months, faster than the transition to digital by the music and movie industries. (Presumably he meant eBooks would become the dominant, rather than sole format.) It's notable that futurist predictions can now being made for radical changes occurring over a period of months rather than years or decades!
An interesting aside was that he projected that 35% of "readers" will own an eBook reader by the end of this year-- however "reader" is defined, it's a reminder that the book market (and libraries) are driven by a relatively small group of consumers.
