Re: Publishing on WWW

DB (DB.PRESSBKS@press.uchicago.edu)
Thu, 15 Dec 1994 07:01:10 -0800

Rob Raisch wrote:
>I wish more publishers would realize this, rather than rushing to the Web.
Please >don't get me wrong. I would love the Web to be a decent publishing
tool. But the >forces driving the publisher are control and those that
drive the user are issues of >freedom.

It's sort of a paradox isn't it? A lousy publishing medium that people are
rushing to publish in. Part of the solution to the paradox is to
distinguish between the author and the publisher. Authors want to publish
on the WWW because it's quick, easy, and makes one's work accessible to
colleagues. Publishers who need to recover their costs are reluctant to
publish in a medium that has no accepted mechanism for doing that.
I think HTML is an inadequate markup language for publishing. And the WWW
needs mechanisms that guard copyright and allow for payment. Nonetheless,
the enthusiasm with which the WWW has been embraced by authors and some of
the high-quality publishing projects that are being done on the web make
inescapable the conclusion that there is something very much right about
the web as a publishing medium.

Dean Blobaum
The University of Chicago Press
dblobaum@press.uchicago.edu
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