"..with the kinds of friends the book has, it needs no enemies.." A great read by Richard Nash, who in the 90's founded and built one of the seminal indie presses, Soft Skull. Would be great if he pushed this toward a book. No one else is writing about the history or future of publishing with such a depth of knowledge.
Also, loved the Vonnegut excerpt: "The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness."
Hi. This is Michael (Submittable). I've been on a plane today. Just seeing this. But this answer is spot on. We came from a publishing background where publishers have an over-supply of content-see Clay Shirky's Congnitive Surplus for more on this- and they needed a simple way to accept and curate incoming work. Submittable was originally a tool for that, but has since branched out to accept and curate any kind of digital object: manuscripts, film, audio, images, links, applications, resumes, anything coming in that needs to be reviewed and acted on.
Yeah, we're told by their customers that they do two things that are particularly egregious:
1) They force non-compete contracts
2) They treat their customer data as theirs, essentially leveraging the filmmakers submission information against you.
As a result, they've gotten incredibly lazy with their product. It's a shame for filmmakers and the festivals.
With business, if you don't innovate, you die. University research is usually grant-driven. Grants are the result of filling in the right answers and telling a committee what they'd like to hear. There's much more urgency to be constantly innovating in business.
This is very similar to the Groupon model... you get a deal (or a thing) while being being motivated to spread the word. Not 'sharing' so much as promoting. You're being inconvenienced (paying) and it allows you to edit the text.. so you can just say.. "I'm tweeting this page so I can read it rather than pay them. Sorry."
I don't know. Not sure if this is the final iteration but very cool that they're trying to figure out how to put value on content other than banner ads. Hope they figure it out.