Global economy

Description:

If the worldwide economy is going very good, most of the industries will be able to claim the same thing. But if we consider the current financial situation, we notice that not only the real-estate and banking industries are the ones to suffer, but also any other industry. The side effects of a bad financial situation are: less money to invest, less consumption, less trust in institutions and organization, less production, less income etc.

One that interests us in particular is the annual income people get during a financial crisis.There are plenty of lay-offs every day. Those that are lucky to still have a job will most probably have a lower than usually income. So what are they using their income for nowadays? Do they still consider that a university degrees still deserves the huge investment or the 10-years credit at the bank? They could easily consider that, as they had earned enough money to satisfy their needs in a job that didn't require a degree, they should start learning at home and give up on school. If the level of education decreases then there will also be less and less people to read, or their reading activity will be far lower than today. Not only the study books will have to suffer from this, but also all professional books and even the novels.

Another impact the worldwide economy can have is to make companies consider twice any investments they make. And this investments refer to R&D and new technology to generate lower costs. Publishers might consider that the market is not attractive enough to innovate and it could decrease the number of books published. Companies in the ebook industry could consider that the low income will determine customers to postpone with a few years their reader purchase. Overall, there will be less people to read, and less books to be read.

Enablers:

Increase in the level of education
Current economic crisis
prolonged period of the crisis
The collapse of large book houses

Inhibitors:

Recovery of the economy
Growth of e-books
Success of web based book sales