I stumbled across Brenda Cooper revisiting her predictions for 2011, and my interest was completely captured. “What a fun game!” I thought. “Maybe I should make some predictions myself for 2012.” Then I thought again. “But many of my predictions will end up being wrong.” The unimaginable horror of that idea paraded through my brain.
So of course, now I have to write 2012 predictions to take my first good whack at my perfectionism this year. And not only that, but I am going to write them quickly, without obsessive researching, and I’m going to write them boldly without resorting to wishy-washiness. Are you ready?
Publishing
- E-books will continue to gain share in the marketplace. Based on the huge amount of Kindles that sold this December, I’m going to say that by the end of 2012, we’re going to see e-books up to 35% of the market…at least.
- Publishers will hold firm at a 25% net royalty for electronic sales…except for the biggest author names.
- A couple of major name authors will strike out on their own and release titles themselves. Because they are big names, they will easily be able to continue commanding shelf space at B&N.
- Publishers will begin (or continue?) to commit more resources to building stronger relationships with readers (more aggressively building their email lists, for example) and developing brand recognition for their publishing imprints apart from author names. (This one, I am afraid, might be overly optimistic, but I can’t help myself!)
- There will be no definitive answer in the traditional vs. self-pub debate. Some writers will go all in one way or another and be super judgmental of anyone doing something different. The smartest writers will do both. There will continue to be a stigma, although not nearly as strong as it was even a few years ago, against self-published work by writers who haven’t already been traditionally published. Interestingly, there will be no stigma against those writers who raise money for projects using crowd-sourcing platforms like Kickstarter. (Maybe because Kickstarter mainly works for those writers who already have an established fan base?)
Current Affairs
- There will be the usual hoop-la of a US election year. Romney will win the Republican nomination, and Obama will win the election, but it will be a hard fight. Voter apathy will be more of a problem than it was in 2008.
- The Euro will still exist as a currency at the end of 2012. No promises for 2013, though!
- Some major shit will go down in Egypt this year, what with elections expected in the next six months. The military won’t let go of power easily.
- Syria’s government will collapse by the end of the year.
- The economic turmoil in the EU and the political turmoil in the Middle East won’t do the US economy any favors. Oil prices will go up. Volatility in the stock market will continue. I don’t expect unemployment rates to improve substantially (although I’d be very happy to be wrong).
- My husband says the cinema industry will begin to tank this year, but I disagree. I actually think 2012 will be better than 2011 in terms of box office sales. The foreign markets for movies will continue to be robust.
- Social media sites will try to collect ever more information about their users. Some people will continue, inexplicably, to think that they should overshare mundane data with their “friends.” Facebook, Google+, and Twitter will all continue to exist healthily at the end of the year. Klout, on the other hand, will have lost its klout in most circles due to both its basic dullness and its arbitrary algorithms (how I can lose or gain influence over 1000 people in the course of a single day is beyond me).
- Houses will begin to become “smarter,” both due to Kinect technology and chips that talk to each other over WiFi and Bluetooth.
- Scientists will push stem cell research farther this year, and will succeed in regenerating a more complicated organ (they’ve already done bladders and tracheae).
- There will still be no flying cars or Asimov-esque robots in general use (and no, I don’t count the Roomba).
Care to play along? What predictions can you make about 2012?
The Practical Free Spirit 
I like reading people’s predictions, I never remember what anyone predicts and I rarely bother trying to predict anything myself because of my predisposition to forgetting what I’ve said/written. I rarely re-read anything I’ve written as well.
That being said, I will agree with Seth Godin’s premise that the job market is changing from industrialized, automated, overpaid sameness to self-employed creative opportunities becoming more predominant, with the most successful being the ones that offer something unique others will be willing to pay large amounts of money for.
So, really, that is his prediction. He has been blogging about it for quite some time now. I can’t take any credit of original thought for it when he is proven right. darn it all.
Yeah, I rarely remember what anyone predicts either. 🙂
I agree with Seth Godin as well, although I think the shift is happening over a period of several years; it’s been going on for a few years already, and will continue to do so this year.
And while it is his prediction first, you’ve obviously thought about it enough to have formed your own opinion. So I guess that means you share his prediction. 🙂
Great list. I love that I’m still regularly surprised by new technology, even though I’m immersed and a sci-fi reader.
I absolutely agree about Klout, and as an oversharer, I think you’re right about that too. =D
I’m predicting a large (60-80 people) cult suicide this year related to the Mayans, but lots of jokes and good times for the vast majority of people.
Huh, good call about the cult suicide. We shall see.
I see the election working out close to to what you do. I could see Paul getting disgusted when the republican wolves go after him. His virtual tie with Santorum and Romney will insure that hit squad will target him heavily on Fox.
Germany didn’t need a horrible war to dominate europe, they have managed it without a single shot. France will be a rather unwilling dance partner but too invested to walk away. Euro will be around as long a Germany wants it to be.
Egypt is a powder keg that could devolve into a reestablishiment of a Miltary Dictatorship to ‘protect’ it from becoming an Islamist state.
Syria will be a civil war by the end of the year, The opposition is arming as we speak.
Biggest news in cinema will be the rise of on demand venues taking away cable business. More and more people are cutting the cable and pulling their video from the internet.
Ebooks will democratize publishing simply because there will be books that grab an audience that no publisher would have printed. I think authors will be able to take greater risks and it will be a good thing.
I have hopes for Google+ but FB will still be the ‘social’ venue with Google+ being more of an information portal, networking combo.
There will be a big push for an artificial kidney to be made available. Dialysis will be a thing of the past.
I will say there will be flying cars only because I really really really want my damn flying car.
Fabulous list of predictions!
-Yes, I was thinking artificial kidney was most likely. I hope it IS this year!
-Totally agree about on demand taking business from cable companies. That’s actually what I said to my husband when he made his statement about cinema. I already don’t have cable and pay for the new shows I want to watch on a show-by-show basis.
-I’m worried about Egypt. Yup.
Re: flying cars: Don’t we all? Oh yes, we do!
The reason I think the artificial kidney will be rushed to the market will be on humanitarian reasons, much like aids medications were fast tracked once they were found to be even marginally effective. Once the preliminary studies come in and show a benefit the huge market just waiting out there for the treatment will push the FDA to fast track it.
I am thinking about pulling the plug on my cable at the end of this yr. I really get steamed paying for a host of channels I have absolutely NO interest in (the game show channel for Pete’s sake) yet one that I may be willing to give some time to being in a more expensive tier. Thanks for the fab 🙂 I liked your list too. Smarter housing could be nice, I like SARA on Eureka. Err did I let my inner geek speak?
i’d love for my son to be able to see kidneys created from his own stem-cells. sadly that’s not going to happen in our lifetime.
What about Asia? Do you see Kim Jong-Un surviving out the year or North Korea having internal conflict?
I don’t feel like I know enough about Asia to make predictions that aren’t just completely random. What do YOU think? I’d imagine you might be more up to speed.
My husband says the cinema industry will begin to tank this year
Haven’t people been saying the same thing since the onset of television? 😉
Yes! But going to the movies is a different experience, and that’s what people are paying for. Plus, I thought I heard that people will buy movie tickets even in a recession because it’s relatively cheap entertainment…don’t know if I’m remembering correctly though.
you are absolutely correct! although i don’t know about “cheap” these days. for one person, even here, it’s $20 for a matinee after you get your ticket and concessions. i don’t exactly call that “cheap”. remember when it was a buck??
*Relatively* cheap. I don’t often get any food or drink either, which helps a lot. But really, it has gotten a lot more expensive, but it’s still cheaper than going to a concert or most live theater or something like that.
Still, it sometimes blows my mind when I think of how much it used to cost. 🙂
when you do the math – the movie studios get the box and the cinemas get the concessions – it makes sense. but still. i’m one of those people who goes for the whole movie experience, though, and my waistline shows it. i have to get the big soda and the monster popcorn (then i have to get up and pee at least twice through the movie LMAO).
Cinema will be fine for the next year; a bunch of big, interesting movies are due to come out, and what hurt movie sales this year was a lot of bad larger films that people just didn’t bother to go see. I’d predict we’ll see a slow increase in independent box offices, in fact, since the small group of varied independent cinemas still around are doing much better in general than the big box theatres showing ten screenings of the same film. Netflix will have a more profound affect on the eventual fates of movies after their theatre opening, which will move cinema further away from the opening-night model as the primary method driving marketing.
Kim Jong-Un isn’t going anywhere; at present China views North Korea as a border state, and will help the Kims resist most any change in the country for its own protection, so North Korea will remain a dictatorship until China becomes a more liberal nation or other countries are willing to risk war with China to break the hold of the Kims.
I’d be surprised if the artificial kidney was out this next year; kidneys are quite complex organs, and we’re barely getting muscle cells to work. Maybe we’ll see them within five years, though I’d love to be proven conservative. Replacement hearts will probably be available within the next year or two, with other replacement organs developed in order of increasing complexity.
I expect the flying car in about twenty years, provided they can crack vertical take-off. The catch is you may not be flying your car; in fifteen to twenty year, driver-less car systems will be ubiquitous and even expected–and anyway how many people do we trust to fly well?
If the entertainment companies get the new US copyright law passed, there will be a huge shift of companies to non-US-managed IPs, a restructuring of name servers and a lot of lost income on all sides. If we’re very lucky it will be the straw that broke the copyreich’s back, but I suspect copyright law will grow increasingly draconian until the entertainment industry comes to accept the new economy, finds ways to survive or dies–after which we’ll have a bunch of draconian copyright / censorship and military policing laws that the next generation will have to fight like crazy to clear away.
The first holodeck is not far off–provided it’s audio and video only. I’d expect in the next couple of years a version of something like Second Life for a 3D games system that allows one to ‘walk’ around in virtual space. I’m not sure it will be important, though; we already live in a virtual world.
What I want, is my virtual heads-up display Internet connection. Maybe five years from now for the iGlasses?
Hurrah, can’t wait to see what we get right, and what we get wrong. 🙂