US eBook Market to Eclipse Paper Book Sales By 2017, and Other Nonsense

US eBook Market to Eclipse Paper Book Sales By 2017, and Other Nonsense DeBunking The tea leaf readers at PricewaterhouseCoopers are back aging this week with more predictions for the future of the ebook market.

According to their latest peyote-inspired predictions, the ebook sales in the US book market will eclipse paper book sales by 2017:

In its annual “Entertainment & Media Outlook,” set to be released Wednesday, PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) estimates that trade (consumer, not educational or academic) ebooks will drive $8.2 billion in sales by 2017 — surpassing projected print book sales, which it thinks will shrink by more than half during that period.

I found out about this prediction via paidContent (they got an early look at the data), and I can't help but roll my eyes at the idea that anyone is taking it seriously.

The thing about this prediction is that PwC said almost the exact same thing last year. Here's how paidContent put it:

New data from PwC’s media report projects that e-books will make up 50 percent of the U.S. trade book market by 2016.

This was confirmed in other reports, in case you were wondering.

I don't know about you, but if PwC is going to repeat the same 4 year projection for a second year in a row then I am going to tend to think they're full of it.Whatever model they are using to make those predictions is clearly inaccurate and cannot be trusted.

And that's not even the only serious discrepancy about their data; their short term predictions were off by a ridiculous amount. Last June PwC said that their projection for the 2012 US consumer ebook market would hit $4.3 billion. Yesterday PwC said that same market only hit $3.3 billion in 2012.

Their short term projection missed by a billion dollars. That is a 29% difference between the prediction and the reality. While that might not be much of a difference to a govt accountant or an analyst out here in the real world it is ridiculously huge.

Seriously, how can anyone talk about these projections and keep a straight face?

About Nate Hoffelder (9968 Articles)
Nate Hoffelder is the founder and editor of The Digital Reader:"I've been into reading ebooks since forever, but I only got my first ereader in July 2007. Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there. Before I started this blog in January 2010 I covered ebooks, ebook readers, and digital publishing for about 2 years as a part of MobileRead Forums. It's a great community, and being a member is a joy. But I thought I could make something out of how I covered the news for MobileRead, so I started this blog."

2 Comments on US eBook Market to Eclipse Paper Book Sales By 2017, and Other Nonsense

  1. Good for Nothing // 5 June, 2013 at 2:15 pm // Reply

    LOL, just because someone’s prediction failed doesn’t mean your prediction is any better.
    At a certain point the balance will shift.

3 Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. USA: eBooks werden Printmarkt 2017 überholen (vielleicht) - ALLESebook.de
  2. PwC Claims eBook Sales Will Exceed Print in 2018 - The Digital Reader
  3. PwC: Now That They Exceed Print Sales, eBooks Sales Will Continue to Grow Slowly | The Digital Reader

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