ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at a range of alternative business models which, while located outside the traditional book publishing domain, are of real significance to its current and future operations. It considers a number of emergent business models within book publishing. It then discusses the developments in order to anticipate what the near future is likely to hold for global book publishing. The internet and the World Wide Web have enabled major improvements in the storage and delivery of all forms of content. The ability to reproduce perfect copies of content assets and to use compression technologies for distribution has opened up new horizons for content distribution and exploitation. The three alternative models described below are all variants on the common theme of author independence and are, respectively, business models for self-publishing, social publishing and community publishing.
