We are all book publishers

Do you think of yourself as a book publisher?

This week Digital Book World wrote up a provocative post about how in a decade or less, any media outlet will think of themselves as book publishers. They pulled a lot of text from a source article on the Shatzkin Files, including this gem:

Soon — in the next 5 or 10 years — every university (perhaps most departments within a university), every law firm and accounting firm and consulting firm, certainly every content creator in other media, as well as most manufacturers and retailers will become book publishers too.

That's essentially everyone who has something to offer to the world starting to offer something in book form. Or more accurately, ebook form. And if we extend the self-publishing revolution well past self-publishing authors who are business-people or fiction writers, the idea of media outlets, schools, consulting firms, manufacturers, etc. as publishers as well, the mind starts to reel at the idea of how many books could be out there waiting to be read.

For now, books, especially print books, retain a kind of prestige and are typically viewed as something only a specialized few do. But as people grow up with the Internet and blogging and as books start to look and feel more like blogs, the idea of anyone publishing a book doesn't seem so far fetched.

And, in fact, with companies and brands already publishing blogs and whitepapers for years, the question may not be so much when will companies start pubishing books but why have they not already started doing it?

There's a perceived hurdle for now. Clients I work with who are authors think nothing of spending months on a book, but often have a hard time committing or getting into spending a few hours on marketing. For businesses it seems to be the opposite- there is an entire department focused on marketing, but the idea of publishing a book is still met with raised eyebrows.

I think it would be amazing for everyone to think of themselves as a publisher- what do you think?

Image source: heidi shempp fournier via flickr