Thought on the current state and likely future of the German publishing industry: not very deep ones, I'm afraid. In a word: grim, according both to every publisher I know and what I've observed myself. On the one hand, you have the ongoing trend of bookstores closing and the internet book trade not only dominating the market but being into publishing now. On the other, you have the fact that because of the easiness of self publishing, you have hundreds, thousands of writers publishing ebooks for 2 Euros. But you don't have more people reading.

Now right now we still have the Buchpreisbindung, i.e. publishers aren't allowed to offer books below a certain price rate. And a good thing, too, because the Buchpreisbindung is one major reason why at least a good part of German authors can support themselves by writing books. But a published hardcover of ca. 400 - 500 pages costs around 20 Euros. And the ebook version, because of the Buchpreisbindung, isn't allowed to be cheaper for more than two Euros, i.e. costs around 18 Euros. Meanwhile, you can download self published ebooks for 2 Euros. These may be badly written (or not; as with every genre, there's the full range between masterpiece and rubbish available) and done completely without any type of editor, but they're cheap, and according to my sources, that did make an impact in recent years, and will only continue to do so. But once you give up the Buchpreisbindung, which will inevitably happen sooner or later, it's time for authors who aren't Frank Schätzing to look for a second job again. Which will inevitably impact their ability to write.

Then again, I'm a professional optimist, so who knows? Maybe it'll go another way entirely.

December Talking Meme: The Other Days