Here’s another article on digital publishing – this time from a scholarly publication, The Society for Scholarly Publishing:
… Publishers today are either Born Again or Born Digital depending on whether a company already exists or is a new entity. With few exceptions, companies that already exist seek to be Born Again. They survey their current operations and consider how they can be enhanced and extended through digital media. They would be crazy not to, as they are sitting with a stack of estimable assets, from copyrights to trade relations, not to mention an ongoing flow of cash.
There is great diversity among the Born Again, from using digital technology purely for internal efficiencies to seeking new opportunities among, say, mobile users. But all Born Again publishers hold one strategy in common — the use of information technology to build upon a business that came into being in an earlier era. For the Born Again, IT is not a disruptor (though it can be an annoying expense) but simply an aspect of the environment that must be accommodated and exploited in the ordinary course of events. A Born Again publisher, for example, may have started out in the print world, selling journal subscriptions to libraries. But today that publisher is entirely digital — and has a business model based on selling subscriptions to libraries. Where’s the disruption?
