Mothership down
On Monday’s “Future of Book Publishing” panel (the Twitter feed is available using #futurebook), host Kevin Smokler led Pablo Defendini, Debbie Stier, Matthew Cavnar and Kassia Krozser in a discussion of the ”brave new world” that book publishing faces.
Offering some hope, the panel widely agreed that the future of publishing depends in part on redefining the “mothership” as content, not book.
That’s the right start, although it also points to the significant risk established publishers face. Business models and workflow metaphors are very much embedded in the companies that have succeeded in the past.
There is a strong pull to stay the course, particularly when the new models appear to offer limited scale or profitability. Failing to make the shift, though, opens the door to a wide array of motivated firms who see disruption as an opportunity, not a threat.
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