Questioning profundity of digitalization of book:
foresight study for Russian book sector
Ilya Kiriya, PhD., professor
National Research University
Higher School of Economics
ikiria@hse.ru
EMMA, Bournemouth University, June 2013
PARAMETERS OF SURVEY
 Survey was made by Laboratory for media research Faculty of

media communications HSE in fall 2012 and has been financed
by Federal Agency of press and mass communications
Main methods:
 Deep interviews with 12 experts from industry (publishers, distributors,
associations)
 Expert survey: validating tendencies (trends) on scales of probability,
importance for industry, positiveness, identifying drivers and uncertainties
 Building scenarios
 Basic trends was taken from long-term foresight study and road
map made by HSE for whole sector of media, ICT and
Communication until 2030
 Method of road maps
MOST IMPORTANT TRENDS
Technological
Economical
Terminal devices
Transforming business
models
Networks of data exchange
Growth of aggregation
Storage capacity
Fail of mediators (editorial
function)
Constructed on different theoretical bases and forecasts: Webb, Castells,
Fagerjord & Storsul, projects of Georgia Tech, OCAD University, IBM and Ifra
TERMINAL DEVICES
 Convergence mass
communication functions
and interactive exchange,
mass-self communication
(Castells)
 Growing computational
capacity of devices
 Interactivity
 Development of fixed home
devices toward "added
reality" and "virtual reality"
(penetrating 3D, 4D, 5D in
home)
Ofcom
NETWORKS OF DATA EXCHANGE
Forecast of traffic evolution in
mobile networks
 Growing up of


CISCO
broadband capacity
Total connectivity of
devices
Total coverage of
networks (permanent
access from mobile
devices)
STORAGE CAPACITIES

Growing information
volume
Growing of storage
capacities

Volume of digital
universe (eB))
Broadcasted and stored content (eB)
 Capacity to store all
broadcasted information
 Access to content instead
property for content
IJOC
IDC
TRANSFORMING BUSINESS MODELS
 Redistribution of budgets
Content makers


between business-models
of consumer paid and third
part paid models
Transforming of
advertising formats and
redistribution of ad
budgets
New genres of advertising
So Consumer
ur
ce
of
inc
Third part paid
o
(advertising)
m
e
Professional
Non professional
Anti-advertising
Prosumer
Media chaos
Branded World
WAN/Ifra
GROWING IMPORTANCE OF
AGGREGATION
 The rise of access incite



consumer to choose
Aggregators and searching
machines are main "enter
points" for consumer
Big volumes stimulate
aggregators to make a
dumping during buying
rights
Advertising is moving
towards aggregators
Тип платформы
Закрытая
И
с
т
о
ч
н
и
к
к
о
н
т
е
н
т
а
Открытая
Пользовательский
Walled Communities
(Закрытые сообщества –
пример: Facebook)
Контент производится
пользователями, но
размещается ими
самими на основе
авторизации
(фильтрации) постов
New platform aggregation
(Агрегация новой
платформы – пример:
YouTube)
Контент производится
пользователями и
размещается без
ограничений
Профессиональный
Традиционные медиа
Контент производится
профессионалами и
распространяется через
закрытые (платные или
бесплатные) платформы,
где информация перед
дистрибуцией
проверяется
Hyper Syndication of
content
(Гиперсиндикация
IBM
контента)
Контент размещается
крупным агрегатором,
который массово
скупает права на
профессиональный
контент и
предоставляет доступ к
нему
FAIL OF MEDIATORS
 Self publication and self
distribution is starting to
dominate within Internet
 Self publication in music,
publishing business
UGC
1234 eB
~1000 eB
Professionally
produced
content
1234 eB
% American Internet users making their own content
IDC

E-marketer
Growth of popularity of personal
blogs and attiring advertisers
MAIN TRENDS FOR BOOK PUBLISHERS
Trends
Trends within publishing industry
Technological
Terminal devices
Adaptation book formats to new kind of devices
Decreasing of demand on printed books
Decreasing reading practice
Networks of data transfer
Decreasing reading practice
Increasing share of online books
Increasing of storage capacities
Pirated book distribution
Economic
Transformation of business models
Using advertising based model for book sector
Increasing of aggregation
Using advertising based model for book sector
Fail of mediators
Increasing share for self-published books
Moving distributors toward aggregation model
PROFUNDITY OF CHANGES

Main question - what the profundity of changes will be? Case of music and newspaper market.
Revenues of American editors of music and newspapers by platforms (bill. USD)
Census Bureau
EVALUATION OF MAIN MODELS
EVALUATION OF RISKS
RISKS AND TENDENCIES
Most favorable influence
Appearing Internet-stores and
electronic means for selling
Increasing Internet
penetration rate
Appearance of selfpublication platforms
Developing e-paper
Developing terminal
devices for reading
(readers)
Decreasing interest toward
reading practices in favor of
other platforms
Most insignificant tendencies
Appearance of online distribution
models like Google books
Most unfavorable influence
Most significant tendencies
Pirated distribution
of books
SET OF SCENARIOS
Risk 1 (piracy level)
Risk 2 (dynamics of
decreasing reading
practice)
Favorable driver Non favorable driver
(high Internet
(moderate penetration
penetration rate) rate)
High level of piracy
High decrease in
reading practice
Neutral
scenarios n 3,7
Non favorable scenarios
n 1, 5
Low level of piracy
Moderate and low
decrease in reading
practice
Positive
scenarios n 4, 8
Neutral scenarios n 2, 6
DESCRIPTION OF SCENARIOS
Scenario
Level of piracy (% from
all e book market)
Book reading level (%
of people reading at
least a book each
year)
1
70-80
40
5
60
10
2
45-50
40
10
60
15
3
70-80
50
15
80
20
4
45-50
50
20
80
25
5
60-70
30
2
60
15
6
55-60
60
15
60
20
7
55-60
30
10
80
15
8
55-60
60
30
80
25
Annual
growth (%)
Internet penetration
rate (%)
Share of ebook in
publishing market (%)
CONCLUSION
 As we could find respondents are estimating e-book penetration

quite low till 2025. We could say that they are skeptical about big
profundity of book digitalization.
At the same time they are much more positive when it concerns
western book and publishing market where the share of digital
publishing and passing toward self-publishing model is rated
much more higher by respondents.