Jane Little’s 2014 predictions list is wide-ranging and fascinating throughout. One point that I believe warrants mention is below and relates to online communities. One curious feature of the list is that Amazon seems to have got there already with a few points. Perhaps there is a danger of us all-seeing the future of books the same way Amazon see it. That would be unhealthy. In any case, there’s so much in there you’d be best reading it yourself.

Penguin and Random will buy a large reading community.  Right now other than streamlined distribution services, the merger hasn’t resulted in much of a change. Each publisher has its own sales, marketing, editing, and acquisition teams. But data about readers is more important than ever and so is the issue of discovery. Traditional publishers need a community of readers already built. They don’t have the time to create it from the bottom up and their efforts like Bookish and Book Country have been failures.  Their best option is to buy Wattpad or Scribd and given that Wattpad is venture capitalist-backed, Wattpad is the more viable candidate.

via 2014 Publishing Predictions.