Print will probably continue as a niche, says my magic 8-ball, and won’t vanish entirely (even though new releases on VHS tape and 33rpm LPs largely have).

But the factors working against print aren’t in its favor: The cost of materials (paper isn’t getting cheaper), the cost of shipping (fuel isn’t getting cheaper), the dent that the returns system puts into print but not electronic editions(plus the unpredictability of it, which doens’t play well with financially risk-averse, bottom-line oriented publishers, i.e., all the major ones), the improvement of technology (e-reader technology, e-ink, e-paper, etc. will only get better, to there point where one might envision a codex bound volume of 300 paper-thin sheets of e-paper), network access will only get better worldwide (so one can grab a book any time), the ability to take more risks on content with ebooks because of the lower production costs, the “getting comfortable with change” factor that allows more people to accept a new thing is only in favor of ebooks, surveys show that very few people actively dislike e-readers once they’ve tried them, and so on.

I can’t offhand think of any tailwinds that are working in favor of print, just tailwinds for ebooks and headwinds for print.

Just because today ebooks are roughly the same order of magnitude as print sales is no indication we’ve reached any kind of steady state. (Remember than when ebooks were 0.1% of sales many pundits said -that- was the steady state.) The product adoption “S-curve” is the thing to watch. When it starts to really flatten out (i.e. year-over-year ebook sales are flat), -then- we’ll know we’ve found equilibrium. However, year-over-year ebook sales are still growing at a huge rate. The growth rate will have to start slowing down a lot before it can plateau, and we don’t even see it slowing down much yet. That suggests we’re still in the early-middle to maybe middlish part of the S-curve. The left half the S-curve is more or less a mirror of the right half, so we can surmise that ebooks still have a lot of market share to gain still ahead of them, and will gain it within a few years. Based on the S-curve and my own curve-fitting to it, I would not be surprised to see the end result being that print captures 10% or less of sales.

It’s worth pointing out that the AAP’s data for ebook sales vs. print paint a generally similar picture (the AAP reported in June that YTD ebook sales surpassed hardcover sales; and are basically even with paperback sales – $282M ebook, $230M hardcover, $300M paperback, $99M mmbp; FYI, it’s their data I base my analyses on), so it’s not just specific to Amazon, even though Amazon sees the harbingers first. So, right, ebooks have not yet overtaken all print formats, but one train is accelerating rapidly and the other train is slowing down, so if the trends continue (and there’s no apparent reason they shouldn’t), ebooks will overtake all print sales fairly soon, and continue pulling ahead.

Some folks may not -like- what the data show the trend is and may wish it otherwise, but from the standpoint of the cold equations, it will be what it will be. Authors would be wise to plan for the (strong) possibility that ebooks will be the primary form of books within a few years.

(And thus, for example, look to get the best deal one can on electronic rights, and examine offers from publishers not in light of today’s ebook sales figures, but also, e.g., in light of a scenario where ebook sales might be 90%+ of sales.)