Economic Models of Digital Publishing

The works of Philippe Aigrain in Europe and Lawrence Lessig in the United States establish that in many areas of our intellectual activities, we do not primarily indulge into acts of market-related services even though we gain access to the valuable objects for which we spend a great deal of our time. The non-market goods have multiplied with the development of the media. “Amateur’ photography is a prime example, but it is the nature of the “société du spectacle’ to unfold in a single gesture of a market-related service and of a ‘personal development’ project. When it comes to publishing, the story is nothing new. Few authors were able to make a living from their works. For almost 150 years, in the industrialized European and American countries, it looked as if a network of booksellers appealed to an adequately educated public to compensate the whole “book chain’. The rise of the distribution of music and video recorded on compact and inexpensive media was accompanied by considerable investments in promotional networks and distance selling, the television programs showing music, films and interviews, multiple business transactions of large retailers and the growing use of mobile devices for sound and image diffusion reduced the hold of publishers in the world of culture and refrained them from commercially sharing the digital files instead of printing books. With this transformation comes a revolution in the form of books, of which few become multimedia files full of hyperlinks and of interaction opportunities. The classic book is no longer. However, classic publishing has developed certain key aspects of the distribution of cultural goods. Their user pays only the right to access because he does not destroy the goods by using them, and once the printing and distribution costs are covered, they remain available for any other payment. The second-hand market contributes to perpetuating the reputation of publishers and authors and engaging readers to participate in the establishment of a rating of books. The economy of publishing is also based on the sharing with a wide audience that does not pay each work in particular. Libraries allow circulation at a lower cost which increases the sharing of books and ideas while ensuring predictable income for publishers. Are these traits kept for transforming the works into digital files? Digital publishing sufficiently encompasses diverse areas in order to come out with multiple models. We present those models in the following pages without being able to predict their future. Paper publishing lives on a set of factors determining its capacity. The distinguished brand was the catalogue whose reputation grew by an editorial line and granted the “long tail’ publisher. A book, without ever having been successful, over a long period of time can amortize its costs by small sales. Publishing is rarely a speculative business, but its past activities have lasting effects. This hope is best realized when the publisher controls the diffusion and distribution channels. Formerly, many publishers were also booksellers, and if some of the publishers distributed their publication and that of other publishers, this resulted in increased turnover and a constant balance. Obviously, these activities are capital-intensive and approach the mass market publishing. There is also a long-standing recommendation: the school books replaced the religious texts, few titles sold by subscription, a set of rewards in the form of “literary award’ stimulating the sale of some names whose profitability is considerable, and the media coverage further intensifies this effect. Here, the publishing houses are closely intertwined with the media sector: certain editors relate to the show business though they find it the most outrageous. Fame would then result …