ABSTRACT
The development of the digital environment for publishing has brought about many changes for publishing, whether reorganising the production process around the digital workflow and asset management systems or reconfiguring the activity of a marketing department to integrate social media practices. There is an increasing pressure on price and new market entrants are staking claims on the publishing of content. Each aspect of publishing that we have explored in Part III of the book has led to the conclusion that publishing as an industry needs to rethink some of its fundamental behaviours. New business models need to be developed quickly. And where a business model changes, all the elements of that model may need review, from discounting and sales practices to royalties and content development. There is the additional impact for those businesses that have not had to make any
major structural changes in any regular way: the legacy they carry of an infrastructure, honed over decades to traditional publishing practice, means change is both costly and cumbersome to implement. Newer players in the market can benefit in various ways: they do not have to carry the costs of any old infrastructure; they can ignore part of the market altogether (e.g. the print market); they can be nimble either through the low entry costs if they operate at one end of the market (e.g. self-publishers) or by commanding huge funding for investment that outweighs the financial strength of many large publishing houses, as the large technology companies can. The question is complicated further by the fact that that legacy is still necessary for
the time being. Print books still represent the larger part of global sales and even as sales slow down they will continue to be significant; so retaining aspects of the traditional
infrastructure is still relevant, whether promoting relationships with bookshops or ensuring warehouses operate effectively. Publishers therefore cannot throw out everything with the aim of reinventing themselves for the new digital age, yet many observers agree that tweaking at the edges is not going to be enough.
