Changing Ideas in Publishing
Once upon a time you needed a Printing Press ...
The ability to publish meant you had to gather information, edit
it, print it, and distribute it. The economics of owning all that
meant the free press was effectively closed to most of us.
A PC is helpful, but now you need about $20 ...
The WWW changes all that.
For about $15-20/month and PC access you can write
and publish WWW pages that are readable at
several million computers accessible by hundreds of
millions of people.
This means new opportunities and challenges ...
This means that all sorts of people and organizations have
new capabities:
- reach a wide audience at low cost, electronically
- form groups around specialized interests
- teachers, students, writers, artists, musicians can all reach
target audiences.
There are new challenges to the publishing environment:
- search engines to sift and select information of interest
- building electronic commerce on the WWW
- changing the culture of ownership: now we buy a book or CD
and that is an oject of value; in the future we will pay for
the use of information and not an object that contains it.
- protecting intellectual property (music, books, news) from
illegal resellers
See how old publishers are adapting to the WWW:
- Time-Warner
Offers access to Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, Warner Music, etc.
with pitches to buy things.
- NY Times
- The Home News
of Middlesex County.
- DowVision
has the Wall Street Journal, NY Times News Service, etc.
They are "testing the waters" for providing news on the internet
at a price.
A Big Challenge to Old Publishers ...
More important, big publishers deal in mass markets for
readers, listeners and viewers. How will they deal with people whose
interests are not mass market and who want to know a lot about a narrow
subject? How will they deal with ordinary people who want to be
providers of some kind of information and don't care about
being paid?