My crystal ball was a little off in 2014—there were baby steps toward some of my predicted trends, such as the growth of the niche stores and the rise of the para-professional. But I was way off in other areas. I gave the magazine industry more emphasis than it seems to be meriting, and I was way off-base in my predictions for the library market. So, the question is, can I redeem myself for 2015? Here are my ebook predictions for the coming year.
1) The ‘Internet of Things’ trend will finally hit the public consciousness in a big way. I feel like we can blame Lifehacker and GigaOM for the vocabulary term itself, but the idea behind it—non-computer devices with connectivity features—is a huge growth area. I’m not sure how big (or not big) the iWatch will be, but I think we’ll see more growth in this area. It goes beyond just fitness trackers now—I’ve seen special-edition Evernote Moleskine pads which have special dots printed on the page which allow for more efficient scanning into your Evernote account, and books with embedded QR codes which download bonus pages onto your tablet or eReader. I expect we’ll see more innovation on this area.
2) The how-to market will grow on the Kindle store. I have seen at least five books in the ‘recommended for you’ section lately which are 50 pages or less and are on subjects which correspond to subjects I have searched for on Amazon. And I have seen a handful of books which outline, for potential authors, how to research, assemble and crank out these mini-books for fun and profit. A lot of digital ink has been spilled on how to write and produce self-published Kindle fiction. I think the non-fiction market is going to have its turn and we’ll see the Kindle store flooded with mini-guides on all manner of subjects.
3) A maturing in the professional skills development of authors and self-publishers. I’ve seen a handful of bloggers (Howey, Konrath, Doctorow) rise to demigod status in the eBook world over the last few years. Many of them have compiled their best-of advice into blog posts which get referenced often. I expect to see someone take this to the next level and establish some sort of author university thing, offering full-fledged courses on writing, blogging, formatting, publishing and so on. I think we need such a thing, and someone’s going to do it!
4) Something interesting is going to happen with Goodreads. I am not sure what, exactly, but I have seen them more tightly integrate with parent company Amazon, add features such as an author Q&A program with almost real-time conversations with big names, and make headlines for bad author behaviour, bad reviewer behaviour and its overly insular forums and discussion groups. I am not sure what all of this is building toward, but I think it is building toward something that’s going to turn the industry on its head—the same way when the iPad came out, it seemed to come from nowhere, but it was exactly what the market needed to go to the next personal computing level…
So there you have it—a little of everything, coming our way in 2015. What do you think we’ll see in the coming year?
Image credit: Garry Knight under a Creative Commons License.
