The traditional book publishers are facing hard times and now it's getting even harder. The arrival of ebooks may be even more devastating for the book industry than the Internet was for the music industry. Publishing power is vanishing. On-line bookstores are building a new kind of customer connections which is stronger than the publishers ever had and almost as strong as the customer relation of classic bookshops. Large ones like Amazon even put a pressure on pricing, decreasing the income of publisher. At the other end of the queue authors will find easier and easier to publish book electronically. To convert a book written in word to ebook and upload it to the Internet is not a big deal even today, and it will get easier (http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/01/19/apple_plans_to_reinvent_the_textbook_with_ibooks_2_for_ipad_.html). Publishers are in the middle between authors and readers and this middle is getting thinner and thinner.
It doesn't seem that anybody knows the way out of this situation. But it doesn't mean publisher should give up. They still have some cards in their sleeves. First of all they also have to learn how to publish on-line and move the cost down significantly. Lower cost level doesn't only increases competitiveness but allows to publish small circulation books. This combined with the good local market knowledge opens the door for targeted publications, a niche which is not open for big players. Electronic publishing also allows personalization to the extreme, but the real hit would be to set up work-group of authors, researchers, programmers, editors, marketing guys... who build, update and enhance a large content database which generates publications for the widest kind of requirements. E.g. imagine that one of the authors writes a story which plays in Africa (using the publisher qualified database for background information). He does it modularly so a short and long version is generated. Editors can build other versions by adding pictures, news, lexical information, small applications, interviews, videos.. as they like. This gives enormous flexibility but only a cohesive well managed group of people (= a publishing house) can do that.
It doesn't seem that anybody knows the way out of this situation. But it doesn't mean publisher should give up. They still have some cards in their sleeves. First of all they also have to learn how to publish on-line and move the cost down significantly. Lower cost level doesn't only increases competitiveness but allows to publish small circulation books. This combined with the good local market knowledge opens the door for targeted publications, a niche which is not open for big players. Electronic publishing also allows personalization to the extreme, but the real hit would be to set up work-group of authors, researchers, programmers, editors, marketing guys... who build, update and enhance a large content database which generates publications for the widest kind of requirements. E.g. imagine that one of the authors writes a story which plays in Africa (using the publisher qualified database for background information). He does it modularly so a short and long version is generated. Editors can build other versions by adding pictures, news, lexical information, small applications, interviews, videos.. as they like. This gives enormous flexibility but only a cohesive well managed group of people (= a publishing house) can do that.
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