Report Buyer, has added a new report examining the potential impact of digitisation and other trends on the book market in the UK.

“Bookselling: Market report 2008” reports that the greatest challenge facing the bookselling industry is the wholesale digitisation of printed matter.

The report shows that leading publishers are digitising their backlists and preparing to digitise all their new books. Digitisation will make two things possible: e-books and print-on-demand books.

Despite the uncertainty of what the market will be for these types of books, it is clear that a market for them has already arrived. Mills & Boon, for example, is preparing to digitise around 2,000 of its back-list titles, at the rate of around £70 a month.

The study highlights that a growing number of out-of-print books are now available on the Internet through print-on-demand technology and an expanding range of books is being published as e-books, as well as in hard copy.

Authors of the report note that the digitisation of books is presenting a major challenge to the bookshops: The Booksellers Association (BA) believes that booksellers and publishers need to work together to devise a strategy to exploit this new technology. The BA argues that both parts of the book trade will suffer unless they collaborate more closely, and many experts and observers of the book trade agree with this conclusion.

“Bookselling: Market report 2008” is available from Report Buyer. For more information, see website.

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Report Buyer is a UK-based independent online store supplying business information. The website now carries over 85,000 business information products, including market reports, studies, books and events. Subscribers receive a free monthly newsletter and email alerts on new titles in their areas of interest. A regularly updated blog provides information on the latest market trends.