In traditional publishing, with a number of large existing publishers having economies of scale and the ability to publish and market books all over the world, makes for a steep barrier to entry for new publishers and authors. The bigger the publishing house, the more likely its run by a corporate body and a board of directors focused on one thing.. the bottom line. Therefore the kind of content produced by these large publishers is forumlaic, and predictable. Using the same top-selling authors and a marketing machine that can crank out book signing tours, talks, appearances on TV talk shows and perhaps using some influence in getting favourable book reviews from leading news papers and magazines. Smaller niche authors with new and unexplored ideas have to take their chance with smaller publishers who do not necessarily have the cost benefits of a large publishing house or the marketing muscle.

Enter ePublishing. This new medium of publishing and distributing content online, presents some really interesting opportunities. On the one hand it reduces it largely reduces printing costs, the only cost that have to borne are the one time cost of designing the book, the bandwidth cost of hosting it on a site and allowing people to download it. On the other well established publishers, especially ones who are moving into the ePublishing space will have more money to burn in making their books generally known.

This is truly an exciting time for authors and want-to-be authors. Given the fact that there are so many opportunities and avenues for getting your content read, which ultimately is the aim of any author. Even if an author does not succeed in getting published with established publishers, there is now the online ebook option, and there are a number of sites offering to publish or at least host your ebook on their site.

One interesting offering in this area is from Lulu. A company founded by Bob Young, who was a co-founder of Red Hat (a company that offered its own flavour of Linux for the non-technically inclined). What they basically do is allow you to publish your material whatever the medium, and they do all that at no cost to you. So if you have a great idea for a book and can’t find a publisher, they will help you create the book, then when they start to see revenues for your book, they take a little piece and send you the rest.

Anyway I think the ePublishing space is only getting started. There are some really exciting times ahead! What do you all think?

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