Publishing Going to Hell in a Bucket? At Least I’m Enjoying the Ride!
Everyone is wondering where publishing is heading. The headlines and pundits talk about the end of the book, the end of the bookstore. There is so much to worry about.
Well the time has come to stop worrying and to enjoy the ride. With the potentially immenent establishment of the Book Rights Registry (BRR), combined with pure capitalism, that ride is about to get real fast and real exciting. Publishing isn’t going down – it’s on the cusp of exploding!
In this brave new world, what exactly does it mean to be a publisher? I would define a publisher as a rights holder to content. It is an entity whose sole purpose is to accumulate and sell content. Whether they sell that content as a book or to an agent to re-sell, their primary objective as a business is to maximize the return on their assets.
In this time of uncertainty, there is tremendous pressure on publishers to figure out where its universe is headed. There seems to be an assumed rule that publishers must define and navigate this landscape themselves. In fact, publishers need do only one thing: sell their assets, their content. That might mean a book, an ebook, or a website anthology – as long as they are selling it in a way consistent with their mission, that’s the only thing that a for-profit publisher should be doing.
For commercial publishing to complete the next phase of its evolution, it must be set free from the forces of traditional models. It must operate in an environment where books are not the dominant medium for content. Let the force of the market and the entrepreneurial spirit bring forth a punctuated equilibrium.
What does it mean to set it free? It means the creation of a definitive licensing repository for static content (writing, art, etc. – the content that typically comprises books). It means providing a mechanism for any business to very easily monetize the content of any other business with mutual consent to terms of usage.
Amongst the most important things that publishers do well is package content for commercial sale. They find or create it. They edit it. They make it look pretty. They promote it. Up to now, the mechanisms for sale of that content have been largely limited to the physical world. The Book Rights Registry provides a portal to a whole new, unexplored universe. It provides a new mechanism for publishers to sell content to anyone. Equally important, it provides a new mechanism for anyone to use content in hertofore unthought of ways.
There are plenty of issues with the Google Settlement that favor Google in perhaps unfair ways. But the Book Rights Registry opens the door to anyone to commercialize this universe of content. It’s a new frontier. And it’s going to be a wild ride!
