The Advantages of E-Publishing and Why It Is a Suitable Crypto Business

In this article publishing refers to writing and publishing for money.

I. Traditional Publishing vs. E-Publishing

What are the advantages and disadvantages of e-publishing compared to traditional publishing?

As an author, I have extensive experience of traditional publishing since many decades and are well aware of its pros and cons, but since many years I'm also into e-publishing. The only disadvantage it offers, is that the readership is limited to those with internet (and the significance of that limit is gradually diminishing), otherwise, as I see it, there are only advantages. Let's look at them by comparing to traditional publishing point by point. They can be grouped into three categories: control, economy and environment.

Control

In traditional publishing, you submit your material to a publisher, and then you often lose control of it. It is edited by someone, perhaps someone else chooses pictures and fonts and makes the visual design of the book. Of course it possible to regulate this in a contract, but few authors think of that before it is too late. It is also difficult to require limitation to the publisher's freedom before you are an established writer, really attractive to the publisher. And if you are too difficult and have too many requirements on everything, the publisher might choose not to do business with you. After all, he knows his business and he has invested money in you. He pays for printing, distribution, advertising, and all those costs that precede any income. If your book fails, his money is lost. From that perspective he has the right to make decision about how the material is packed and presented.

Self-publishing is a possibility, but that requires considerable resources. Then you must be able to finance all those things yourself.

For e-publishing, you can easily do all this yourself, if you so prefer and if you have the knowledge to do it. The costs are negligible. (See why it is so on Economy below.) That means that you can retain control of all aspects of your creation.

Economy

The financial advantages of e-publishing compared to traditional publishing are obvious:

When a traditional book or magazine is printed, printing itself costs money. But that is not all. You must have a fixed edition. It means that you print, for instance, 10000 copies of a book. These copies must be stored, which isn't free. They also must be distributed to points of sale. Transports costs money. Perhaps all are not sold, then you lose income from a part of the edition. In the end it may have to be destroyed or sold without profit, just to stop additional storage costs. If the edition is fully sold, there might be a new edition. The same procedure applies again. And you cannot make corrections, except before a new edition.

In e-publishing, there is no printing, essentially no storage costs or transport costs, and an edition can never be sold out, it exists until you choose to withdraw it. Indeed, you need to keep only one copy of the file, then you make a copy each time you sell one; that is negligible storage. (Of course you should also keep backup copies of everything.) Transportation/delivery is by email, or by downloading from a website. Corrections of errors can be made at any time and if you feel you want to make an updated version, you can do that any time you want.

Assuming that you have internet anyway, advertising is the only factual cost that remains, although there are alternative marketing forms available as well. That is, expense, counted as money. Your other cost is time. But it takes time to write a manuscript to a traditionally published book or magazine as well. It might require a little more time, though, if you are handling all the details yourself, even apart from the writing.

Anyone still doubting that e-publishing is better than traditional publishing? Let's look at another aspect then.

Environment

Creating physical books and other printed matters require physical material - mainly paper, but also ink, glue and several other substances. How much forest could be saved if most of the printed paper in the world was replaced with digital files? How many trees must die because humans want books? E-books require no trees.

Transportation and distribution of physical books (etc.) contributes to environmental pollution; it takes fuel, much of which is based on petroleum. E-mailing does not, it is good for the environment.

Admittedly, internet, computers and emailing also take some energy, completely in the form of electricity, and electricity is not always produced in a way that is friendly to the environment. However, the amount of energy required for the production of an e-book, from writing the first word and all the way until it is delivered to a reader, is very small compared to the production of a physical book.

This calculus does not pay attention to the environmental strain caused by the production and distribution of computers, simply because we do not think that computers are made or distributed especially for creating e-books. They are already there anyway.

II. E-Publishing, Suitable for a Crypto-Economy?

One of the difficulties with cryptocurrency so far, has been its volatility. Bitcoin can drastically fluctuate in value over a day. This has stimulated speculation, but we may not forget that bitcoin is created to be a currency, to pay and be paid with, a currency for business of any description. The fast change of value up and down poses a risk for many forms of merchants. It needs to reach a stage of greater stability before it can be mass adopted for day-to-day business.

Why does the volatility cause problems?

To be profitable, a business must get in more than they spend. Temporarily, it can manage if inflow and outflow is the same. But if the inflow is lower than the outflow, then it soon goes bankrupt.

But if you buy parts to – say – a car, and sells it for more than you paid for the parts, you make a profit. No problem... or is there?

If you buy the parts for – say – US$, and sells the car for bitcoin corresponding to more US$ than you paid for the parts, bitcoin can fall before you have exchanged some of them to US$ so you can buy parts to your next car. Indeed, you can end up with a loss, where you cannot afford to buy parts again. That's one reason why bitcoin has not become a greater success than it is. This problem, of course, would disappear if bitcoin was more generally used, so you could also buy the parts with bitcoin, never having to change or relate to US$.

I think we approach such a situation, when more businesses can have its whole financial inflow and outflow in bitcoin, eliminating the exchanges. But that is coming rather slowly and gradually.

I would say that e-publishing is relatively suitable for cryptocurrency, because its costs, in money, are small. The payment is not mainly to cover purchase of raw material, but as compensation for immaterial work – your time. Thinking, research and writing are not bought, you don't pay for them; you spend your time for them. Of course there must a reasonable compensation for your time, but if received bitcoins swing in value, it doesn't pose any immediate problem for your business. If they fall, so what? You don't need to buy new parts or raw material, or pay for transportation to keep your business alive, just hang on to your bitcoins and continue the work, and they will sooner or later rise again.

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