Know The 2010 Publishing Predictions

One of the predictions that has been made every year for a while now is that the book will be seriously challenged by some sort of electronic format. Pessimists have been claiming for many years that paper is a dead medium that is soon to be replaced completely. Could 2010 be the year that these predictions finally come into effect?

There is reason to think so. The Apple iPad has brought a stylish new threat to the book into being, and one which many publishers of books and magazines have been taking an interest in. Joining the Sony eReader and the Kindle among other electronic readers, the iPad is just one among many book alternatives. This year does seem to be the first time that many publishers have taken the ebook threat to their paper productions seriously, however, and many critics have suggested that the iPad could do for the publishing industry what the iPod did for music. It could play a major role in revolutionizing the way that people read, and changing the way that people think of reading.

It is not just the ereaders themselves, but also the electronic bookstores that make predictions that 2010 could be the year of the ebook more plausible than the similar claims made in previous years. Google has been scanning books into electronic formats. Project Gutenberg has been providing people with free electronic copies of their most beloved classic books. But now the major publishers are beginning to give in to the pressure and think about ebooks and how they can make a profit from them. Electronic bookstores on devices such as the iPad are beginning to be stocked with newly published books and it could soon be considered normal for a publisher to release both a paper and an electronic version of a book at the same time, perhaps with some additional extras such as author interviews included with the ebook version.

This doesn't signal the end of the book as we know it, but it may signify that we should expect to see attitudes to ebooks change in 2010, or at least begin to change for good. Reading an ebook could become a normal way to read if devices such as the iPad catch on and there are plenty of good reads available for a sensible price in ebook form.

Predictions of what this could mean for publishing and books in the years to come are another thing entirely. The possible routes which could be taken vary widely, from a return to serialized novels, to ebooks being sold with the sort of extras currently found on DVDs, to the development of an entirely new form of literature with multimedia and interactive components.