4 ms·

Heck, even the publisher stands in risk of being disintermediated here Only if you don't know what a publisher does. See also: http://www.antipope.org/charlie

• jerf 14y ago
  That's why I said only "at risk of" and not that it was certain. But, as is the way of the internet, it's not hard to imagine in ten years that the many things you say go into the publisher's set of responsibilities could themselves be dispersed to more than one entity. Publishers previously had an effectively-physical moat around that set of tasks, because they had control over the book and essentially force you to consume all the services from them to get to the physical book. Now they're going to have to ensure they are bringing value throughout the process. Which in your domain, they probably will. But this is one way of viewing the ever-growing academic revolt against Elsevier. They do a couple of their duties OK, but the whole bundle they are providing is increasingly less compelling vs. what they are trying to charge.
  • cstross 14y ago
    Alas, "publishing" is actually about a dozen different business models flying in loose formation. Generalizing from, say, trade fiction publishing to peer-reviewed academic journals to text books to newspapers is, shall we say, not going to work terribly well.
    • jerf 14y ago
      I didn't. If you find it not unlikely that some publishers may themselves be disintermediated in whole or in part, that's all the support I need for the point I made. I never said that all publishers are doomed. I only said that given that publishers are themselves going to be facing this sort of pressure, even if some survive it quite well, how much more so would Amazon, trying to be a fourth party in the already-pressured three-way reader/publisher/author relationship.
      • pja 14y ago
        Dude, just drop it already.