The Wall Street Journal has an excellent story about author Ryu Murakami’s move to Apple’s iPad platform.
The digital package will include video content and set to music composed by Academy Award winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, according to the Japanese business daily Nikkei. The newspaper reports the e-book will cost 1,500 yen ($17) and will be ready to download pending Apple’s approval.
It will only be a matter of time before writers and others collaborate to publish what might have been a magazine in the print world direct to the iPad and, like Murakami, cut out the traditional publisher altogether.
It will mean a new type of publisher will replace the old or the old will graduate into being the new. Authors will still need publishers of a sort to approve or disapprove of the content. No different from the print media graduating into electronic replacement, advertising news etc just evolution, some call it progress. A new name for publisher would or could be “arranger” of material.