Katy Whitehead of 5th Estate writes about
The Future of Publishing

The Christmas of 2009 was like nothing ever before seen in the industry. On Christmas day, ebook sales from Amazon.com outsold physical books. Perhaps this, combined with the fact that we are at the start of the first week in a new decade, is behind the waves of bloggers and commentators taking a moment to peek into their crystal ball to try to predict what publishing will look like in the future.

Richard Curtis predicts that

At least one major publishing company will be acquired by a retailer. For instance (and this is NOT a prediction, just a for-instance), Amazon could acquire Random House or Apple could buy Simon & Schuster.

I don’t know whether this would be a good or bad thing for the industry as a whole, but Curtis certainly makes a convincing argument for how this could bring stability to the publisher in question.

Meanwhile, over on Brave New World, the involvement of Google is viewed as a major deciding factor in the future of publishing, regardless of the success of their book settlement.

A while back, we did our own survey of predictions by industry insiders for a feature entitled Publishing in 2025.
To read what MD of Press Books, John Bond; Peter Collingridge, MD of Apt Studio and Enhanced Editions; and Scott Pack, Publisher of The Friday Project, as well as many others, think the future of publishing will look like, link to 5th Estate.