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If you look at the Book Industry Study Group’s latest survey of “Consumer Attitudes Towards Ebook Reading,” you’ll find that the industry is more than likely leaving money on the table. Some highlights from the report:

Once a customer is on the Kindle platform, odds are they’re going to buy fewer physical books, thus killing the Indie bookstore. In essence, Amazon is telling these companies to onboard customers to a digital platform that will destroy their business.

One of the things I tried to do at Pottermore [the Harry Potter online experience and e-store which he headed up from 2009 to 2011] was to start thinking beyond the business that is ebooks. Now, ebooks are going to be a hugely important part of what we do, and a growing marketplace and a fantastic way for people to read books. But it’s not the limit of digital opportunity.

Bezos: The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie. You know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. Amazon is not happening to book selling; the future is happening to book selling.

It does leave that group of super-readers as a target market. The key question there is are there enough of them to sustain a scalable business?   So, in summary I think that buy in from major and minor publishers alike for front list titles will be difficult to get. Like many innovations and early-stage concepts it will take a few brave publishers to go all-in and accept the consequences