There have been a lot of “end of the year” reports about whether or not publishing is dead, blogging going south (forever), and how with the advent of Twitter and other micro-blogging services that “everyone is now a publisher.”
I would argue that this is untrue, especially in the sense that people are publishing things that they generally created themselves.
What is more true is that everyone is a transmitter of data and information and this is seen best in the Retweet feature of Twitter. But no one would say that someone who simply retweets a link is an actual “publisher” of content, would they?
Publishers of content is something entirely different; they are a unique breed of people who are true creators of information. They are more than just a “curator” (which is another popular word now a days). Unfortunately they get lost in the hustle and bustle of which we call the internet, but they still exist.
There will always be a move toward generalized terms as we mix industries, paradigms, and thoughts, but there is oftentimes an opportunity to return to a more “pure” understanding.
And I just did it.
BenJPickett says
Publishers are most of the time not the creators of content, they are more like transmitters. Let’s roll the clock back to times before the interwebs. If you wrote something and wanted to get it out for people to read you would submit that writting to a publisher to package in mass quantities and distribute to the public. And it was usually many years before someone was well off enough to afford or have the needed recognition to be able to self publish. There were exceptions of those that worked in the publishing field and gained the knowledge and the contacts to be self published very early on, but most were never self published.
So if anything in this electronic age and day we find ourselves in a position where people can publish their own information and get it out there to be seen. It’s just been recently with the explosion of the internet and the ease of creating your own site that it’s become so simple to be your own publisher.
Stephen Bateman says
I would argue that a publisher needs to be focused to be considered a publisher. Otherwise it’s just lots of noise isn’t it?
Trevor Taylor says
I would say that more writers are becoming publishers. A publisher is usually seen as an entity that places the writers material out in the market place. Publisher as a middleman is fizzing out as the writer now has the ability to have more say and reach with there content and how it is placed in the market. I do agree that not everyone is a publisher.