ABSTRACT
Publishers have developed expertise in content; finding it, nurturing it, developing it and producing it. Publishers see this as one of the important aspects of their role. In the traditional publishing value chain, content is one of the points of scarcity. Publishers are able to find and nurture authors and put their work into a format that can be distributed as effectively as possible. The crafting of that content is helped along by publishers, whether editing content at an early stage or preparing the content for publication, with the aim of achieving high quality where possible. The process of selecting content in the first place also involves a level of quality assurance: this could be by peer review to ensure scientific articles are accurate and valuable; or through testing books in the marketplace, such as educational texts; or by understanding market trends and finding the best books to reflect the interests of different readers. Understanding and managing content therefore is the lifeblood of publishers. However, the digital age has introduced certain changes into the environment that
render some aspects of the publishing value chain less critical than before. Clearly the ease with which publishing can occur on the internet means that some of the value that publishers traditionally added has become something most individuals can undertake if they wish. Distribution, for instance, can be achieved reasonably easily for all sorts of material, whether an academic posting up research on open access sites or via individuals self-publishing with Kindle. The content itself is no longer scarce either. Matching content and readers is much
easier to do on the internet; though it is not necessarily always straightforward and can require a fair amount of effort, nevertheless it can be done in a way that was not
possible before. And content itself is everywhere – easy to identify and easy to get. It may be unregulated content, it may be unformatted, unchecked, badly written or inaccurate, but it is at least available and anyone therefore can get involved in ‘publishing’ it in some way. We can all be publishers, whether we post something on a blog or publish something more carefully constructed for a specific use; we can even simply publish the fact that we ‘like’ a photo on Facebook. So publishing has become democratised and content is publishable by anyone. While this might be seen as a threat – who needs publishers if you can do it
yourself? – it is content that is still central. Good content more so. Publishers understand their content and what it can do and offer, and how it can be used and provided to readers effectively. The way content is valued is changing, however; this theme has come up throughout the book. Different types of content have different, sometimes new, roles to play in the digital environment. New large players are entering the content marketplace from other industry sectors driven by motives very different from those of publishers. At the other end of the scale, individuals are able to take control of their own content and publishers. These issues are having an effect on the environment within which publishers operate.
