A couple of weeks ago the social media manager at 40k Books, Letizia Sechi, asked if I'd be willing to answer three questions for a feature that appears periodically on the 40k blog. She wanted to know:
- If you could describe publishing with three adjectives, which ones would you pick and why?
- Could you point out an example of innovation in publishing that is worth looking at?
- In your opinion, what are the three unavoidable steps for publishers today?
Sechi asked me to do this around the time that I was finishing a second draft of "The library within us", so my answers intertwine a bit with the ideas in that presentation. The full interview is now available, but if you're hankering for a short version, the three adjectives are "disruptive", "connected" and "rewarding".
And the three unavoidable steps? Make content open, accessible and interoperable. Use content as a means to build communities. And, nurture communities by providing both goods and services that meet identified needs.
Sechi caught it all in the title: "Publishers need to think of themselves as community organizers". To me, that's both grass-roots and global.
