Why are publishers still here?

In the wake of the Internet the publishing industry has become effectively obsolete. In a natural free market, this would have resulted in a massive drop off in profits and a large reduction in this area of what is effectively little more than simply a 'middle man'. In its place, one would expect to see on the internet a large increase in the availability of mainstream software & electronic media (games, films, music, writing) becoming available from its respective developers and creators directly to the people that such items are for, with the removal of large publishers from the mix.

This of course has not happened. Publishers are still here and appear to be thriving.

Lets look at the “why”, the “how” and the “what” we got instead.

At this point, it would be fair to ask a simple question.

Why do you do what you do?

I would, in our society, give two answers, and it is vital to understand that these are not mutually exclusive, quite the opposite.

1. Because its what I want to do.

2. To make a profit.

If what you truly wish to do is the first you still cannot ignore the second, because in our society, this is practically nothing that can be done without money.

If however what you wish to do is the second, then both answers are the same because what you want to do IS to make a profit.

And here in lies the problem. What do you do when one gets in the way of the other?

For the person doing what they want to do, yet having to make a profit, this is a disaster, and compromises must be made in order to continue making a profit because otherwise they won't be able to do anything.

For the other person, there is no problem, because it IS profit that is made.

Of course making a profit is very, very acceptable, even enshrined in our society today, and I'm not trying to split hairs here by saying you should not get anything for your efforts and work, but to what level. Most importantly though, is financial ownership (monetary control) of an item an acceptable situation for majority profit and control?

Is a 400% profit margin acceptable?

What about 100%?

The reason I bring this up is because it is important to understand that profit is an additional cost tacked onto the price of an item, above what it costs to produce.

Now consider a change in environment from which products had to be distributed manually, a hard copy transported from the place of production to outlets from which these products could sold, to one where a item can be replicated infinitely, practically free of charge with absolutely no distribution network apart from a website and an internet connection required.

In the old system it is obvious that large publishers distribution networks are required, and that a composer, novelist, or computer game writer would have no capacity of their own to be able to get what they love to make, to the people would love to use it and benefit from it.

And that’s where the publishers come in. An individual cannot possibly be expected be able to get a factory to produce their item, get a delivery company to distribute, and convince large high-street chains to all sell that product.

The publishers do all that.

What do they get in return?

With that amount of power over the creator/developer of a product, very strange deals can be reached.

But of course, what is fair is simply a matter of personal opinion.

Then came the Internet.

Looking at this from a financial perspective, one can see that on the Internet, the only true limitation is that of the cost of hardware and bandwidth.

From a logistical perspective, there are no limitations.

Copyright means the right to copy in simple terms. This should not be forgotten especially in an environment where the financial cost of copying is all but eliminated.

The majority of us can agree that a individual should own the rights to their work and be able to benefit from it. However the terms for use of this work are not singularly defined and a lot of disagreement can occur in attempting to define them in not such a general way. This is the lynchpin of the copyright argument. Indeed it could in fact be considered the lynchpin for the argument of the whole of our current economic system.

So if we can agree that each person owns their own work and should benefit from it, we simply disagree as to what level this should go it.

As if to say, at which point does ownership and profit begin to damage us all?

To answer this I wish to go back to the first question I asked in this article, which was:

Why do you do what you do?

If the answer is simply profit then it seems apparent the reasons for such aggressive and even violent behaviour of the publishing industry. Arrests and fines of large numbers of individuals, copyright software that damages computers and lowers their operating capacity, all in the name of protecting an obsolete monopoly.

So next time someone argues that its fair the publishing industry should get money for what they do, you might ask yourself: if I acted like that to everyone else should I get money for it?