Reading the financial runes can seem impenetrable but all you need to know is a reduction in sales = lost jobs in the supporting sectors. Businesses facing that level of change need a road map to take them through the choppy waters of change to a safe shore. All the evidence suggests that the small continue to go to the wall (as in my home town). Overall income is declining fairly steadily and in consequence, it's a victim of change. For a living I do pretty charts to help clarify choices. Do publishers have a conceptual framework? It's not my problem really -if they go to the wall, they go to the wall -this stuff also doubles up as research so I write about the Last Library on Earth or the Growth in the Surveillance Society, yet the shape of the future is forming as we type and I'm getting my tuppeny's worth in.
To be fair readers have little reason to be interested in financial fundamentals; all they need is product to choose from. However the point of this thread is that Publishing faces Hard Choices.