Future of the publishing industry

Publishing is now available to anyone with access to the internet so there is effectively no need for the publisher, in the traditional sense, to be involved in bringing content to an audience. Yet this is not the end of publishing. It is a growing industry. The digital revolution means the publishing industry has to be innovative in selling books audiences want to read.

Technology has affected publishing before; where once there were job losses and library closures this time it’s the publishing process that is being affected. There are freelance editors, designers and proofreaders, typesetters in India and software development companies all taking part in a single project. This means the publishing company has become the spider in the web.

At the same time however, publishing companies also need to become more than a publishing company; they will have to become a technology company or a design company in order to be innovative. HarperCollins is taking this step by launching HarperMedia and partnering with BSkyB to source news footage for it’s Interactive CD-ROMs.

Technology is also allowing people to experiment with writing but this does not warrant the hyperbole about the death of the book and changing the way we read. Maybe the misaligned comparison with the music industry has led to this and the overshadowing of importance of Digital Rights Management for example. However the consensus is that there are “unknown unknowns” about the digital revolution and these are to publishing’s advantage.

Overall the digital revolution contains the tools to provoke an entrepreneurial spirit in the publishing industry centred around the prestige of the book.