A Book Publisher's Manifesto for the Twenty-first Century: How Traditional Publishers Can Position Themselves in the Changing Media Flows of a Networked Era

In this challenging call to arms, Sara Lloyd, head of digital publishing at the United Kingdom trade publishing house, Pan Macmillan, explores whether there will be a role for publishers in a digital future and discusses the radical changes in culture and approach publishers will need to make if they are to evolve quickly enough to embrace the change from a linear content creation and delivery chain in which a publisher's role is definitive and fixed, to a circular, networked, Web-based one. This is a broad-ranging piece including coverage of the creative directions in which content creation and delivery might develop, new ways in which publishers will need to engage with authors, readers, and other distributors in the content creation chain and the interface between publishers and nontraditional competitors emerging in the digital marketplace.