You don't need a crystal ball to determine the future of the book publishing industry.

Life would be much easier if a guy had that proverbial crystal ball that enabled glimpses of the future. However, we have the next best thing these days: Experts and surveys that can often point the way we’re going, as well as tell us what it is we’re going toward. Here are several excellent articles that give readers a heads up for the coming year.

Authormedia.com took a survey of book publishing experts to create its Publishing Predictions for 2012.

Aptara’s 3rd Annual Survey of Ebook Publishers gives a good look at the likely direction ebooks will be taking in the next year.

And download and take a look at Ruediger Wischenbart’s The Global eBook Market, a free PDF report produced by O’Reilly Media.

Here’s an insight into how many authors are making fantastic money through Kindle sales of their books: The New Midlist: Self-published E-book Authors Who Earn a Living

And finally, a look at how books can be marketed in the Internet age: The Tim Ferriss Effect.

It’s my hope that the various ebook formats will get winnowed into just two or three in the coming year — though more likely it will take several years before the dust clears with one or two clear winners emerging. That said, many publishers and self-publishing authors are discovering that Kindle and one or two other formats generate the lion’s share of sales — with the others being more work to format books into than they’re worth. If this trend continues, it’s likely that eventually just a few formats will be left standing.

Right now the best bets are Kindle (which is a modified Mobi format and as such rather long in the tooth and more than a bit limited) and the newer but nearly as awkward EPUB.

Sadly all the ebook formats in use right now are crude when compared to print layouts. But there’s a ray of hope for those wanting to see ebooks with quality layout, different typefaces (rather than one or two dictated by the reading device), and illustrations: Larger tablet computers are arriving on the scene, and these are capable of reading PDF files (without processing them into a different format), and have screens large enough to allow reading books in their original PDF/print formats (with the option to zoom in on graphics for added detail).

Of course larger tablets won’t appeal to those reading novels or books with few illustrations. Sure a tablet can handle the task, but being larger and heavier than regular ebook devices, tablets aren’t as portable. But for those wishing to read books having pictures and artful layout — as well as graphic novels and comics — the larger tablets may pave the way for quality layout in ebooks that rivals that of print. (And as someone who’s interested in seeing quality illustrations in many of the books I read, I’ll cross my fingers and hope this type of larger tablet reader coupled with the PDF format will eventually become a serious contender in the ebook market.)

In the meantime, 2012 is likely to be a Kindle/Nook/iPad world for those wanting to read ebooks consisting mostly of text.

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Duncan Long loves creating book covers and layouts for print and ebooks. His illustrations appear on book covers from HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Moonstone Books, Pocket Books, and Enslow Publishers as well as on the covers of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and The Sun tabloid. Check out his artwork at Duncan Long’s Portfolio
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