(gigaom.com) -- Lots of different outlets are trying to project the size of the U.S. ebook market and how fast it’s growing. In its annual “Entertainment & Media Outlook,” set to be released Wednesday, PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) estimates that trade (consumer, not educational or academic) ebooks will drive $8.2 billion in sales by 2017 — surpassing projected print book sales, which it thinks will shrink by more than half during that period.
Here’s how the firm thinks the trade print and ebook markets are going to evolve. Note that figures are projected from 2012 onwards.
The total size of the trade book industry, PwC estimated, will be $16.1 billion by 2017 — smaller than it was in 2008, with ebooks not quite able to pick up the slack as the print market shrinks.
PwC also projects that ebooks will make up 38 percent of all book sales — both trade and educational books — by 2017, from 16 percent today.
PwC’s projections are roughly in line with those from other sources. The most recent edition of BookStats pegged the total size of the U.S. trade book industry at $15.05 billion in 2012, with ebooks kicking in $3.04 billion of that. PwC, meanwhile, calculates the size of the market at $15.2 billion in 2012, with ebooks contributing $3.35 billion. But BookStats thinks that the market grew by 6.9 percent between 2011 and 2012, while PwC thinks it shrank by 1.3 percent.
If you’re wondering which one to trust more, keep in mind that they are both projections and that it’s worth looking at methodology: BookStats incorporates net sales revenue and unit data from nearly 2,000 U.S. publishers, then projects the size of the entire industry; PwC says that it looks at “retail spending by consumers on consumer books…and spending on books in electronic formats” and that it derives historical data ”principally from confidential and proprietary sources” — including research group Informa Telecoms & Media — then projects.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock / Thomas Bethge
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