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At first glance, it is difficult for individual traditional sectors to adapt to new technologies, especially if they are revolutionary, as in the case of the transition from Web2 to Web3. New technological solutions, among others,

• enable traceability and control over the granting of rights to use author’s works (including publications, articles, and other works) by the author himself or the owner of copyrighted works and at the same time also over the royalty fee resulting from further granting of copyright to third parties;

• already enable the direct sale of book copyrights directly by the author through online NFT marketplaces, which are otherwise only the first seeds of future marketplaces. And yet, NFT marketplaces are becoming more and more interesting for book authors and authors of other professional works, because in addition to control over the granting of copyrights, the royalty fee is also higher than when working with a traditional publisher. I am providing some links for a better idea:

• • https://books.readl.co/
  • https://www.creatokia.com/en (project supported by well-known Bookwire publisher)
  • https://book.io/books/
  • https://publica.com/
  • https://wippublishing.com/
  • and more.

As we can see, the publisher Bookwire recognized the technological trend in time and is already developing an NFT marketplace.

• already enable online newspapers, magazines and portals, which e.g. are based on a subscription to distribute the income derived from the right to access the content among the authors, namely on the basis of the actual number of readers of each article. Blockchain and NFT technology enables traceability and transparency. I give an example:

• • https://mirror.xyz/

• already allow you to build your own community through an online newspaper with a completely new decentralized business model

• • https://paragraph.xyz/

There are more examples and new ones are created daily. All of the above directly affects the traditional publishing sector. In the past, the publishing industry has already faced the trend of self-publishing and thus also the partial outflow of authors. Methodologies for successful online and Amazon sales of books also appeared in the past, which partially replaced the competitive advantage of publishing houses. Publishers still have a well-developed distribution and retail ecosystem, which ensures a certain circulation and sale of copies of books to classic readers. However, in this case, the author has no direct control over the price and sales and is also deprived of a good part of the royalty fee.

Only a few publishing houses have already started to adapt to the new trends. The above examples indicate that a large outflow of authors to new online marketplaces and other platforms can be expected in the future, which will be able to take over a good part of the role of publishing. Publishing, on the other hand, cannot survive without author’s works (either for the needs of book or magazine publishing, or for publishing works in physical or online form). Therefore, it would be very important for publishing sector to start including new technologies in its development strategies and adapt new business models to these technologies and trends.

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