IBS announces results of London book fair survey

Many of you probably already saw this piece, but I have been traveling and am behind on my reading. About a month ago IBS announced the results of the survey of publishers it conducted at the 2008 London Book Fair. A short synopsis of key findings is available online. Here are some of what I found to be more interesting points:

• Most publishers support authors right to digital download royalties, but most have no mechanism to manage the payment of those royalties.
• Nearly 4/5ths of publishers believed they should be allowed to sell directly to consumers, and 56% said they already are!
• 89% said they believe there is still very much a place for bookstores.
• 83% believe consumers will fully accept e-book readers.
• Academic titles were considered to be among the most likely areas where e-books will be used

The ending quote is also telling,

This survey has shown that publishers are very much moving towards the modern
digital world. [...] However, there are still plenty that do not have any
systems in place at all for online sales and these publishers need to rapidly
re-think their strategy if they are to succeed in the modern high-tech future of
the publishing industry.

The same could be said for many booksellers. An interesting article though with some equally interesting findings. I think it would be interesting to see the full set of data they collected .... something worth tracking down.