London's Observer makes 10 predictions for epublishing, among them, more people reading ebooks on tablets than ereaders, and therefore price drops for basic Kindles and Nooks -- declining to $30 or $40, the price of a hardback, but with book advertising; more experimenting with the design and definition of ebooks -- more multi-media, more video, more pictures, surrounded by well-designed text; more online ebook communities to discern what's hot; new digital publishing start-ups; and most interesting of all:
"Newspapers will become bigger players in the ebook market, following the example of the New York Times, which has joined forces with startups Byliner and Vook to publish original and archive material."
I expect to see newspaper and magazine columnists promoting ebooks of their best stuff, possibly to incentivize readers to pay for a subscription to the publication. "Subscribe to our digital newspaper/magazine for $30 a year and get this free ebook collection by your favorite columnist." For example, if The Washington Post offered me an ebook download of the best blog posts, columns or articles by Joel Achenbach, along with a $30 unrestricted all-you-can-eat (or read) one-year subscription to The Post, I would probably consider it a steal, an offer I couldn't refuse.
On the metro level, if The News and Observer of Raleigh, NC upgraded its online bookstore to include ebooks -- say, downloads of their best stories or best columns or best photos from 2012 -- in exchange for a $30 yearly subscription to the online edition of the newspaper -- I'd think that was a great deal, too.
I'd think online newspapers could find a significant revenue stream from ebooks: if just 5000 readers pay $30, that's $150,000.
