E-books and e-publishing | Page 5

the Internet becomes more gender-neutral, polyglot, and
cosmopolitan - e-publishing is likely to recover and flourish. This
renaissance will probably be aided by the gradual decline of print

magazines and by a strengthening movement for free open source
scholarly publishing. The publishing of periodical content and
academic research (including, gradually, peer reviewed research) may
be already shifting to the Web. Non- fiction and textbooks will follow.
Alternative models of pricing are already in evidence (author pays to
publish, author pays to obtain peer review, publisher pays to publish,
buy a physical product and gain access to enhanced online content, and
so on). Web site rating agencies will help to discriminate between the
credible and the in-credible. Publishing is moving - albeit kicking and
screaming - online.

The Disintermediation of Content By: Sam Vaknin Are content brokers
- publishers, distributors, and record companies - a thing of the past? In
one word: disintermediation The gradual removal of layers of content
brokering and intermediation - mainly in manufacturing marketing - is
the continuation of a long term trend. Consider music for instance.
Streaming audio on the internet ("soft radio"), or downloadable MP3
files may render the CD obsolete - but they were preceded by radio
music broadcasts. But the novelty is that the Internet provides a venue
for the marketing of niche products and reduces the barriers to entry
previously imposed by the need to invest in costly "branding"
campaigns and manufacturing and distribution activities. This trend is
also likely to restore the balance between artists and the commercial
exploiters of their products. The very definition of "artist" will expand
to encompass all creative people. One will seek to distinguish oneself,
to "brand" oneself and to auction one's services, ideas, products,
designs, experience, physique, or biography, etc. directly to end-users
and consumers. This is a return to pre- industrial times when artisans
ruled the economic scene. Work stability will suffer and work mobility
will increase in a landscape of shifting allegiances, head hunting,
remote collaboration, and similar labour market trends. But distributors,
publishers, and record companies are not going to vanish. They are
going to metamorphose. This is because they fulfil a few functions and
provide a few services whose importance is only enhanced by the "free
for all" Internet culture. Content intermediaries grade content and
separate the qualitative from the ephemeral and the atrocious. The
deluge of self-published and vanity published e-books, music tracks

and art works has generated few masterpieces and a lot of trash. The
absence of judicious filtering has unjustly given a bad name to whole
segments of the industry (e.g., small, or web-based publishers).
Consumers - inundated, disappointed and exhausted - will pay a
premium for content rating services. Though driven by crass
commercial considerations, most publishers and record companies do
apply certain quality standards routinely and thus are positioned to
provide these rating services reliably. Content brokers are relationship
managers. Consider distributors: they provide instant access to
centralized, continuously updated, "addressbooks" of clients (stores,
consumers, media, etc.). This reduces the time to market and increases
efficiency. It alters revenue models very substantially. Content creators
can thus concentrate on what they do best: content creation, and reduce
their overhead by outsourcing the functions of distribution and
relationships management. The existence of central "relationship
ledgers" yields synergies which can be applied to all the clients of the
distributor. The distributor provides a single address that content
re-sellers converge on and feed off. Distributors, publishers and record
companies also provide logistical support: warehousing, consolidated
sales reporting and transaction auditing, and a single, periodic payment.
Yet, having said all that, content intermediaries still over- charge their
clients (the content creators) for their services. This is especially true in
an age of just-in-time inventory and digital distribution. Network
effects mean that content brokers have to invest much less in marketing,
branding and advertising once a product's first mover advantage is
established. Economic laws of increasing, rather than diminishing,
returns mean that every additional unit sold yields a HIGHER profit -
rather than a declining one. The pie is getting bigger. Hence, the
meteoric increase in royalties publishers pay authors from sales of the
electronic versions of their work (anywhere from Random House's 35%
to 50% paid by smaller publishers). As this tectonic shift reverberates
through the whole distribution chain, retail outlets are beginning to
transact directly with content creators. The borders between the types
of intermediaries are blurred. Barnes and Noble (the American
bookstores chain) has, in effect, become a publisher. Many publishers
have virtual storefronts. Many authors sell directly to their readers,
acting as publishers. The introduction of "book ATMs" - POD (Print

On Demand) machines, which will print every conceivable title in
minutes, on the spot, in "book kiosks" - will give rise to a host of new
intermediaries. Intermediation is