#CDROM Publisher List?
5 messages in this thread
Jerry,
I'm still a little confused. Let's see if I can get this straight. The
distributor is obviously the person who markets the titles and ships them. But
what are you saying a publisher is? Is the publisher the person who physically
produces the disks and boxes them? In other words a publisher could be just a
service bureau?
>>the developer/producer/author is the person who provides the data to the
publisher, usually in its finished form. The distributor is usually the same
person.<<
Are you saying that the distributor is usually the same person as the
developer/producer/author? Or the same person as the publisher?
Cheers,
John
John,
'Scuse me for jumping in, but the answer to all your questions is "yes." With
desktop CD-R systems, a single (very hyper) person could do all the tasks
you've named for a title, and a service bureau (like Jerry's or mine) can be
considered a publisher. However, in my case anyway, the publisher and
distributor are usually not the same. It can be done, though. For instance,
if I have a customer who wants me to make discs and drop ship them to his/her
clients, I would be both publisher and distributor, but not developer/author.
Maybe what's confusing is the usual perception in the publishing world of size
and numbers when you use those terms — they don't have to be hundreds or
thousands of items to be published or distributed.
Hope this helps.
Kathy Cochrane
[GO ONEOFF]
Kathy,
Thank you. The light is beginning to dawn.
>>what's confusing is the usual perception in the publishing world of size and
numbers when you use those terms.<<
Well, not quite. What confuses me is the use of "publisher" for the service
bureau operation. In the text publishing business the comparable activities
are called printing and binding, not "publishing."
"Publishing" at its root means taking something to the public. That seems to
be the domain of whoever distributes and markets (and possibly produces) rather
than the person who physically manufactures the item. Ah well… as they say,
these are new media.
Cheers, John
Isn't English fun? <G>
In a lot of ways, the language, or our associations of particular terms with
traditional meanings, is lagging behind our industry, which is barrelling along
at breakneck speed. I don't think the really deep definitions have changed,
just our perceptions of what they represented.
Kathy Cochrane
[GO ONEOFF]
John,
Right. The publisher is the person who physically produces the discs and gives
them to the distributor. A publisher may be as little as a service bureau.
Since many people try to sell their own work, the distributor and developer are
the same. Also in the case of in-house work such as price list for a chain of
stores, the store comes up with the pricing, the publisher makes the CD-ROMs.
The store then ships those to the chains. The store is both author and
distributor. Very similar to the paper publishing business.
Jerry