Open Source and the Small Publisher

Submitted by Kurt Lindblom on Wed, 03/11/2009 - 09:43

Resources for starting a publishing company from scratch

Can you start a publishing company with little-to-no working capital?

Why not?

Conventional wisdom will tell you that publishing is a capital-intensive business. The up-front costs of producing, manufacturing, warehousing, promoting and shipping a publication are prohibitive for everyone except the biggest publishers. The last few decades have seen significant consolidation in the industry. And with each new merger, the argument is the same: only through economies of scale can publishers remain profitable.

I don't buy that argument.

The advent of the Internet and all of the advances that came with it have changed publishing forever. Manufacturing and warehousing? They aren't as crucial as they once were, with print on demand becoming more economical and commonplace. Staffing? With virtual offices, a company's workforce can be spread across the world and work on a freelance/consultant basis. Print? There will always be offset printing, but electronic inventory control and e-books are making it possible for a publisher to release a book electronically before going to print...and then only printing hard copies of books that are already popular. Marketing, brand name development, and promotion? These are still essential, but the old methods of direct mail and perhaps even trade shows are giving way to more low-cost electronics methods.

The Internet has changed publishing to the point that the market may actually favor the small and start-up publisher that focuses on tight niche markets and is light on its feet.

In fact, the cost of entry is really next to zero. Just as someone only needs to write in order to become a "writer," a person just needs distribute content to become a "publisher." People start blogging, and--presto--they are a publisher.

The first step in starting a publishing company is finding content. I can't help you there. But once content is found/created and ready for dissemination, there are plenty of low-cost or free tools that will enable people to launch and sustain a small publishing company.

In fact, I consider this site a "virtual publishing company"--not only because it's online, but also because it's an "imaginary" publishing company...so far. As this site develops, I plan to work through the steps of starting a company, posting content here along the way.

In its current form, this site is organized to focus on open source options for small publishers. It starts with a general description of open source software, moves on to describe open source content management systems, continues by review some of the more popular ecommerce options, and concludes with a round-up of other open source tools that small publishers can use.

To continue follow the links below or those in the navigation menu:

Go to Open Source Introduction
Go to Open Source Content Management Systems
Go to Open Source eCommerce
Go to Other Open Source Software


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Resources for starting a publishing company from scratch