What good is a publisher in the Age of the Net?

[dsrtao]

Publishers must have the following characteristics to remain profitable in the Net Era:

• Quality Assurance -- when you buy an O'Reilly title, you are expecting factually correct information presented in a no-nonsense style, a few bits of geek humor, and a decent table of contents, index, and so forth.
  
• Convenience -- the publisher has to put the data into convenient media, be that hardcopy, an optical disk, an updated website.
  
• Content filtering -- as appropriate for the brand: if this is schlock horror, it had better be good schlock horror. If this is an SF brand, the slush should not be floating to the top. Publishers provide a degree of pre-filtering so that only the good stuff is brought to your attention.
  
• Reasonable pricing -- it doesn't really matter if all the other criteria are maxed out; if I can't afford the product, I can swap time for money and go trawling through the Net myself for the information or entertainment I want.
  

Software, music, movies, literature -- all the same. They really only differ in the scale of the number of people and cost of equipment needed to produce the final draft. It's all expression of talent.

Comments

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

Aren't QA and content filtering really the same here?

I think it basically comes down to having a strong added value, as with most industries that have to adjust to internet competition. In this case the main value added is likely to be expertise.

[dsrtao]

No, they're different. Content filtering is selecting or commissioning content from the vast supply. QA is a final polishing step, and one which usually requires someone other than the author to perform it.

Content filtering is reading through the slush pile and saying "this story is great!". QA is taking the great story and doing the spell checking, the line editing, the continuity checking, technical editing, fact checking, and so forth.

What I'm really ranting about is how many companies don't seem to notice that these are things that make them valuable...

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Hmm, I'd disagree with your distinction. Or at least suggest that better QA people know their product and do appropriate content filtering.

(rereads) Sorry, you are correct. You are describing jobs, I was thinking about people. I automatically assume that people can fill several roles at once. The best QA person also performs content filtering, working closely with the developers of the content.

My current company places zero value on QA. Established release policies are being subsumed. It is quite painful.