Publishing and E-Publishing

The Production Revolution Isn’t For All: Time

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Self-publishing.  Webcomics.  Game design tools.  Art programs.

Give yourself an hour and you can find the tools to let most anyone with some skill be a media creator.  You can make books, games, etc. that you could never dream of years ago, and get them to a waiting audience.

Now of course you know I've been a bit cynical that this explosion of tools will also mean a creative renaissance, a kind of "Production Revolution" of media.  My own research, my own experience, has been very informative, so let me put it straight:

All these tools may mean that there's a chance for more people to get out their dream comic/video/game/book/movie and so on.  But there are still many barriers to their chances to do this.  These are not barriers of distribution or technology (which are changing).  These are personal barriers.

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Why Do We Have Such A Creative Explosion on Mobile and DLC?

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(I'm still thinking about DLC and mobile content as of late.  Blame my new Android.)

I sort through the DLC on my console and am amazed at what's there (and at times appalled, but mostly amazed).  I look through the online store on my smartphone and am overwhelmed with choices.  When it comes to books the content available to me, especially via eBooks is stunning.

It seems that, media, software, and gamewise we're in a kind of explosion of creativity and productivity.  There's just a huge amount of stuff everywhere – often good stuff – that we can download, play, read, or listen too.

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Manga, Middlemen and Migration of Power

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As we mentioned last week 37 Japanese publishers are working together on the J Manga Portal,  a joint portal site for North American anime fans this year.  A way to get titles, and of course news.

This is something Bonnie and I have been talking about for months: that Japanese companies and any manga company is best off going to the web and going electronic to both reach people faster, provide content, and to provide competition to scanilations.  After all if they don't want people scanilating, then they need to get stuff out fast and cheap (or free).

However this goes beyond my predictions – it's a gigantic group effort by a large number of companies, some of whom I'm quite sure don't necessarily like each other.  This isn't one company here or one company there, this is basically major representatives of an entire industry making a universal shared content and news portal.  This is huge.

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