First of all, the only physical manifestation of the publication is the file of data that resides on a server. When users view it they receive this data, but only transiently, and generally they do not choose to save it for use offline. Viewing a WWW document is a little like watching television, you can record the program if you really want to, but most of the time you don't bother because you know that you can always find again on the web when you want it.
The publisher of a WWW document can simply be someone who places files of hypertext markup language, graphics, video and audo on a WWW server. The remarkable thing about the WWW is that the document is then instantly visible to anyone in the world with web access. No copy needs to be made, nothing needs to be delivered, no one needs to be asked or notified. Anyone can see it, all they need to know is the address of the document or, and this is very important, the address of a LINK to the document. What then is the publisher's real role? See, the interesting thing is that just putting a document on a server does not really make you the publisher. What if nobody sees the document? Has it really been published? I don't think so.
On the WWW a publisher is someone who gets people to view a document. They are, in the truest sense, the publicists of the document. A good WWW publisher gets viewers to see a document by having LINKS to it posted all over the internet and spreads the word about the amazing new document they've pubished - or they've established themselves as the publishers of high quality or at least popular information.
Getting people to view a document is all that's left of the distribution function. The main thing that a pubisher has to offer is visibility. And that has value that can be translated into cash. A publisher can sell visibility to an advertiser and use that money to pay an author - and authors, too, crave visibility. On the WWW there is, as yet, no way to make money directly from the sale of access to information. Paying for information has always been anathema for internet users. Though it will soon to be possible for WWW users to use credit cards in a secure version of Mosaic to buy things online, it seems likely that the tradition of free access to information will continue.
Among the most popular advertising supported publications we have GNN Magazine - the Reader's Digest of the web, collecting together many articles that first appeared in print publications. By default one must mention here Wired Magazine a print publication with a WWW version, but, oddly, utterly unlike the print original, there are no ads in the WWW version. I always thought the ads were the most interesting part of Wired.
One of the most interesting new publishers of original material on the web is Cybersight created by Internet Marketing, Inc. which is a true hypermedia publication - or collection of publications, really - consisting primarily of documents created specifically for the web that reside on servers scattered all over the world. The genius of the publishers of Cybersight, is that they have surfed the net and gathered together under general editorial groupings like "Noises" and "Pop Culture" some of the best freelance hypermedia authoring being done anywhere on the planet. Most of their authors are students and cyberjunkies who create fascinating material with the same flair and ethos of garage bands and underground artists. It is this tapping into the mother lode of raw material created by authors growing up on the net that makes me feel that this kind of publication - drawn from what you might call the indigenous culture of the WWW - is the model for all future web publications. In a word, distributed content.
Which brings us back to the question of just what constitutes being a publisher. The key is making the LINK. The publishers of Cybersight don't have any of the articles they publish on their own server, and yet they are the legitimate publishers of these documents and even sell advertising on them. The reason they can do this is that they provide the links to these documents that a large number of viewers use to find them. The publisher is, in this context, the entity that provides the pathway to viewers, the doorway into the information.
I should also mention the existing web publications that are supported by grants or academic institutions. Among the best institutionally supported publications are Complexity International a new hypermedia journal from the Australian National University, and Postmodern Culture. Both of these publish original material written in the hypermedia form - which is itself only now beginning to be experimented with as a literary/multimedia form.
There are some remarkably creative things being published on the WWW - things that would have obtained cult status in print - and yet it's doubtful that their authors have received much if any monetary reward for them.
One rather remarkable fact about the WWW is that it is possible to know exactly how many times particular pages have been seen and even the number of unique computers that have looked at them. What you probably won't know, however, is what pathway those viewers took to get to your document. In other words, you can know how many readers you've had, but not necessrily which "publishers" brought them to your document.
What rights should authors of hypermedia documents value? Since there is no such thing as a reprinting of a document when it is "republished" in the sense of being linked to a new publisher's table of contents page, an author should demand a right to refuse or demand payment from a publisher who seeks to create a link to their work. I practice, it may be difficult to enforce this right. On the other hand, just as with unauthorized print republication, the success the greater the success of the unauthorized republisher, the greater the chances of his being caught. The 'word of mouth' publicity will do him in.
With regard to pricing, I've found WWW advertisers to really be all over the may with prices. Many don't even have established rates and will negotiate with a prospect according to their perceived ability to pay.
One of the most publicized WWW marketing ventures - and I should say they don't consider themselves to be the sellers of advertising - is MecklerWeb founded by Mecklermedia it is creating "domains" organized by subject, such as Law, Medicine, Computing, Arts and so on and have these domains "hosted" by a respected publishing entity. For example the Law domain is to be hosted by the Cornell Legal Information Institute which will provide access to on-line legal information through a MecklerWeb, "front door". Users will be able to gain access to much of this information without passing through the MecklerWeb door, but it is believed that a large number of users will enter it via MecklerWeb. This makes the MeckerWeb the "superpublisher" of this information because it is creating a link to the original publisher's link and making money selling sponsorships on the doors to these publishers. Sponsors, whom they recruit from among the Fortune 1000 companies, will pay $25,000 per year for the right to have a link to their own WWW pages placed within a given MecklerWeb domain. Is this a fair price? All one can say is that if it brings traffic to your pages and new customers- it's a good deal. Compared to televsion and magazine advertising, it's a bargain, certainly.
Similarly, Internet Marketing, Inc. places links to sponsor created material inside editorial content of Cybersight. They cater tp a wider range of clients and are more consumer and youth oriented with a specialty brewer, an international college study abroad service and a cosmetics company.
Most WWW marketing services are more like shopping malls, offering collections of "store" in various product areas. The mother of all these types of sites is Commerce Net which is partnering with MecklerWeb and developing a secure http that will make on-line purchasing less problematic.
Some of the other more interesting ones are:
The only major advertising agency with a WWW presence is Ogilvy and Mather which is designing the look and feel of a the MecklerWeb.
Of course, no discussion of the media industry on the WWW could be complete without mention of the Internet Multicasting Service and Internet Talk Radio, both creations of the Internet's own Citizen Kane, Carl Malamud. The only person who actually seems to be making a living providing either audio or video on the Internet. How is he doing it? Corporate sponsors are part of it. Can others emulate his success or is it primarily due to the current novelty of his enterprise?
I will wrap up by observing the combination of my themes of WWW periodical publishing and video in the new hypermag the Video Webalog, a Web publication dealing with computer video products that includes a catalog and advertisements from video product manufacturers. The ads are free now, but they expect to start charging in the near future. Does this presage the development of a desktop video industry on the Internet?
email: gary@setn.org