Looking back into the crystal ball

DelMio.com (MCT) - When author and social forecaster John Naisbitt released his famous "Megatrends" in 1982, it was as if it became must reading because people understood he was on to something. What else would explain why the book became one of the biggest successes in publishing history, with more than 9 million copies sold in 57 countries?

Yet if many of us had a vague sense of what an "information" society meant, it's probably because we could not have imagined all the gizmos _ from iPods to Blackberries to Kindles. Naisbitt's crystal ball foretold the revolution: That within our time, we would have tons more choices on how to communicate and access information.

A good example of the continuing evolution is Newsweek's release this week of four biographies on the presidential and vice-presidential candidates _ available only on Kindle. For $9.99 each, Kindle users can buy separate titles on Barack Obama, John McCain, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. The titles: "Mr. Cool: The Best of Newsweek's Up-Close Coverage of Barack Obama," "Mr. Hot: The Best of Newsweek's Up-Close Coverage of John McCain," "The Outsider: The Best of Newsweek's Up-Close Coverage of Sarah Palin," and "The Insider : The Best of Newsweek's Up-Close Coverage of Joe Biden."

Clearly the audience is limited. Amazon doesn't release sales figures on its Kindle, but industry analysts estimate it's in the low hundred thousands.

Yet the advantages for an organization such as Newsweek are huge: Archives of news and commentary can be repurposed into a book, without printing and distribution costs. With all four books put together within a month's time, it won't take many sales to turn a profit.

Meanwhile, Simon & Schuster is making more than 500 titles available for sale on mobile devices on MPS' Mobile Global Reader.

The digital platform increasingly gives us more choices.

"Remember when bathtubs were white, telephones were black and checks green?" Naisbitt queried in "Megatrends." "In today's Baskin-Robbins society, everything comes in at least 31 flavors."

Today we ask: Only 31? And in which language?

Recently, the Frankfurt Book Fair released a new survey of publishing professionals in 30 countries. Respondents predicted that consumers, Amazon and Google would drive the digitization process, and that e-content will overtake traditional books in sales by 2018.

A press released identified the "most interesting" finding as the expectation that China's digital influence will increase threefold in the next five years.

If you go to John Naisbitt's Web site, at www.naisbitt.com, you'll find China everywhere, with the author calling attention to his Naisbitt China Institute and its effort to "describe China's key economic, cultural and political shifts for the next decades and their impact on the global business landscape."

Instant translation. That's another thing we probably weren't thinking about in 1982.

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Diane Evans is a former Knight Ridder columnist and is now president of DelMio.com, a new interactive online magazine on books for writers and readers.

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© 2008, DelMio.com