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The basic problem for the publishers is technological advance. Publishing became a big industry due to the invention of the printing press. And because publish
by woodandsteel 9y ago
The basic problem for the publishers is technological advance.
Publishing became a big industry due to the invention of the printing press. And because publishing a book requires a printing shop that can be easily located by the police, it was practical to pass copyright laws that forbid counterfeiting.
With the invention of the internet, piracy become trivially easy and basically impossible to block, and so copyright laws are simply not enforceable. I think the publishing houses realize this, and are just trying to hold off their demise as long as possible.
- manquer 9y agoIt is not that simple. Content curation and editing is just as big part of publishing as distribution is. Technology has only solved the distribution problem. It still takes lot of expensive human work to select the good quality works and proofread /edit/ peer review them etc before it is fit for publishing in a decent journal. Ppl are more than willing to pay for legal content if it's in consumable form in a reasonable price point as Netflix and spotify have shown successfully.
- ferdterguson 9y ago> It still takes lot of expensive human work to select the good quality works and proofread /edit/ peer review them etc before it is fit for publishing in a decent journal Good thing that almost all of that expensive effort is done by volunteer scientist editors and reviewers. I routinely see spelling errors and english errors (going against journal guidelines for British/US english) in scientific literature. I'm convinced publishers do as little proofing as possible.
- madhadron 9y agoFor the major journals (Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS), they don't do any. There is no copy editing. That's the author's responsibility now.