The old ways of book publishing are fading away, maybe. But the new ones are still to be found, unless you are Amazon. And one of the problems is finding out an identity for publishers.
The idea that publishing is a sort of dating platform may seem banal. Of course, publishers have always been there so that authors and readers would find each other to establish a successful relationship. At least for the time that is needed for reading a book.
But it used to be that in those relationships, publishers had a lot of power. Controlling the analog technologies, they also controlled the copyright that they bought from authors to resell. Digital technologies have opened that protected environment and ask for a different distribution of power. The best thing that publishers can do is not anymore in choosing the authors and bring them to the readers. They need to serve not to impose. Thus, they could think of themselves as dating platforms designers and managers.
The complexity of matching authors and readers the right way makes publishing a very big job. With, potentially, a lot of money involved. Readers control the strategic resources: they control the time that they spend reading, they control the attention that they give to what they are reading, they control the judgment about how relevant is what they read. Authors need to conquer all that. And they are often too much focused on what they have to write to be able to find the time needed to court their readers, at least before they become their readers.
This is why there is an incredible industry to build for creating the conditions that will match the right authors to the right readers. I have the feeling that a dating platform for authors and readers, a good platform that enables the unexpected and not only the obvious will find its value.
A good platform will be designed in a way that different applications can be developed. Not only some matching software. A real human sensibility is needed: to create the right atmosphere, to create the right moments, to educate both parties. Pygmalions and architects, flower experts and poets, mentors and testimonials… There is a great job to do. (Medium)
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I’d say that a big problem for readers and writers (or rights owners) is how easy it will be to find each other (discoverability) but even more how much intermediation gets in the way of the consolidation, flexibility, freedom and value extraction in such relationship.
A widespread ability for a large amount of users to access to independent full html5 content on their devices (dependent on regulations and oligopolies dynamics), with quick payment and DRM, complemented by search engines and a few recognized discovery/social bookmarking sites (such as tripadvisor has been in travel).
On DRM on Html5 now even Berners Lee agrees:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s7/sh/f69b0ccf-ad17-4300-a963-877f96f6e5ac/75dec71828cb6f62efddb4a515422f84
Here is payment solution concept as a webapp fully controlled by the user:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s7/sh/f69b0ccf-ad17-4300-a963-877f96f6e5ac/75dec71828cb6f62efddb4a515422f84