What’s in store for publishing in 2016?

From BookBusinessmag:

In December, Book Business, sent out its annual Trendspotting Survey asking leaders in the book industry to share what technology they plan to invest in and which products and platforms they anticipate will drive revenue growth for their organizations in 2016. 139 executives responded to the survey, hailing from the trade, education, STM, university press, professional, and religious publishing segments.

Here are some of the insights we gleaned from this year’s survey.

Digital printing will catch fire in 2016. Although we’ve been covering the growing opportunities around digital printing technology for the past couple years through the Digital Book Printing Conference, it seems 2016 will be the year more publishers buy in (literally). 36.7% of survey respondents indicated that they plan to spend on digital printing or print-on-demand services in 2016, topping all other technologies and services. Last year, ebook conversion took the top spot.


Interest in email marketing has grown dramatically. Second only to digital printing, 27.9% of respondents intend to invest in email marketing technology in 2016. This is a huge leap from last year’s survey when it was near the bottom of publishers’ technology priorities. The increased interest in email marketing aligns with trade publishers’ growing efforts to connect directly with their readers.

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