Report from the Semantico Digital Publishing Symposium on Publishing and the Social Web – Part Three
Publishers should place innovation at the heart of their digital enterprise and focus on core specializations and capabilities, among which
curation is key. Social media can help them to connect and engage with customers, and collaboration may hold an answer to the problems of large-scale tech competitors/gatekeepers.
These are final findings from our three-part report on the second Semantico Symposium, held recently in London to discuss the impact of social media on publishers and information providers. An invited audience of publishing industry leaders debated the issues under Chatham House rules, covering the following three themes:
- Trends and drivers
- Disruptive effects
- Strategy options
It was a stimulating event with a high calibre guest list, delegates attending from organisations including Bloomsbury, CABI, CourseSmart, Harper Collins, Informa, ITHAKA and the Royal Society of Chemistry. To do justice to the discussion, we’re reporting it over three blog posts. This post is on the theme of
Strategy Options.
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In an age of unease like this, it can sometimes seem that almost anything is up for grabs. Is there a single feature of the traditional publishing landscape, we begin to wonder, that can’t be disrupted, transformed beyond recognition or threatened with extinction?
Even as the ebook begins to achieve mainstream acceptance, we see the beginnings of an anxiety about the book itself. Can it continue to maintain its status as the definitive instantiation of a text in the online realm? Deprived of its physicality, its strokable covers and rustling stock, has it any reality at all, or is it just a graphical metaphor?
And if we find the idea of the book dissolving away, what form or forms will come to replace it, in doing that essential job of letting us know exactly what kind of entity it is that we are engaging with when we read?
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Lucy Pipsqueak shuddered as rain lashed the cobbles.
On such a day she dared not venture out. The inclement weather would surely ruin her bonnet. Alone in the parsonage, she circled the breakfast table absentmindedly, until
from the hallway came the chime of doorbells. 
Delivering consistency across all touch-points is the mantra of anyone seeking to create a brand experience worth its salt. Of course, in the last year or two we’ve seen an explosion in the number of internet enabled devices.