Everyone’s a Publisher

The traditional publishing used to be an entire production in itself. While no longer as time-consuming as the pre-printing press era, the whole process still involves far too many chefs and at too high of an expense. Content was passed through different hands before it saw the spotlight. Creators jumped from hoop to hoop, losing bits and pieces of ownership and divvying up more and more of their royalties with other entities that helped them get their art out there in the first place. That can now count itself as a bygone era.

The Internet has not only connected people with each other and an endless wealth of information. It has also shattered every barrier that kept content away from target audiences. Access is now a given, a right instantaneously granted the moment a piece of content is published on the World Wide Web. The invention of the Internet has become a revolutionary platform for mass publication and distribution. Traditional publishing houses have watched their businesses hemorrhage money, unable to keep up with the efficacy and practicality of print-on-demand (POD). Outside of the realm of print publishing, entertainment media publishing as a whole has felt the rippleeffect. There is no competing with the convenience and cost-efficiency of the POD model.

Social networking shortens the distance between the audience and content creators. Tweets, ‘grams, and Snaps are now words associated with both content production but also publication. Today’s content creator is not only tasked with creating engaging content for its target audience, but also packaging and publishing it so that it is most economically absorbed. The average person no longer has the attention to invest in a long presentation. There was a time films were four hours long; a Vine video lasts seconds.

This unlimited access has brought in its wake an unforeseen consequence. The immediacy and overall availability of this content has created not only gluttony for the product but also a widespread insatiability and impatience. Such pragmatic means of publishing and distributing has brought a new trend of bite-sized, easily digested content in its wake. The sheer volume of information available at everyone’s fingertips at any given time has made the audience’s attention even harder to captivate, exacerbated by the popularity of social media as a publishing and distribution platform.