My latest on the Computerworld Tool Talk blog:
The problem with publishing isn't technological, it's the business model. For a couple of centuries, we've had nice business models for publishing, but the models are broken now and nothing new has emerged to take their place. The iPad is not going to be a savior of publishing, much as I love the iPad for other reasons and am eager to buy one.
The old business models for publishing evolved over centuries, and they worked well for a long time. Books are straight purchase transactions, people pay for what they buy. That isn't true for magazines and newspapers; single-copy purchases and subscriptions at best break even. Magazines and newspapers are funded by advertising.
Now, those business models are broken. Consumers have a great many other forms of media competing for their time, many of them free and brought to you by the Internet. Internet advertising has proven to be more efficient than print ads, and more efficient advertising is less expensive for the buyer, which means less money coming in to the sellers. That's why the sellers, the newspaper and magazine publishers, are hurting.
Read the rest: Apple iPad: Will it save publishing?
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