Amazon is an online behemoth that has upended the traditional model of book publishers. Adam Davidson looked at how the industry might change in the future:

• There are currently six large book publishing companies. A merger between Random House and Penguin will soon bring it down to five.
• The new entity still won’t be able to compare to Amazon’s book sales and so further consolidation – down to two, or perhaps even one, is expected.
• A similar consolidation happened a century ago when technology companies in the fields of power, automobiles, and chemicals were gobbled up to form giant conglomerates.
• Book publishers too will likely, eventually, become small arms of massive media-entertainment companies.
• There won’t be any anti-trust issues since book publishers deal in the business of the written word, and in a time when anybody can start a blog or self-publish their own book, it would be hard to argue that one great publisher would have a monopoly over the industry.

Read more about how the publishing industry is poised to follow the path of the envelope making industry, what publishers have to say, whether the publishers will use their market power to innovate or to dominate, and much more over here.

Source: The New York Times

Via: Marginal Revolution