Blockchain in publishing sector -is it an innovation? Is it a disruption? Let’s study in detail. Publishing industry is one of those industries where bulk amount of paperwork, admin work, printing work and lot many parties are involved. Other hand, if we talk about blockchain development technology, it has made a buzz ever since its arrival. Blockchain is establishing prominently in every field. Blockchain technology has introduced the new form of monetary transactions in the form of cryptocurrencies. Transactions with can be carried out quickly and in a less expensive way.

Blockchain In Publishing Industry

Publishing industry has many stakeholders. It includes content distributing agencies, publishers, authors, editors, designers, digital advertisers, royalty collecting agencies and others. Day-by-day, there is an upsurge in media and publishing companies that are shifting towards online and electronic formats by abandoning print. Here’s when blockchain-based solutions for publishing are grabbing a lot of attention from authors and content creators.

Let’s understand what challenges are the challenges of publishing industry and how can a trusted blockchain development company act as a saviour.

Challenges of Publishing Industry And Solutions Provided By Blockchain Technology

Limited Content Distribution Network

Content distribution platforms are experiencing a major shift. Sites like Amazon are flooded with eBooks whereas brick and mortar stores are facing challenges to store and sell published work. This cutthroat competition in online market are pushing self-publishers way behind. They don’t get enough motivation to establish themselves.

With blockchain-linked platforms for publishing industry, self-publishers can also come in limelight. They can publish their work on open platform without any worry of content being stolen. It is easy to detect and prevent piracy and unauthorised access through cryptographic identifiers.

• Difficulty In Source Authentication

Google and other search engines are loaded with lot many information. How to find originality in this crowd? Anyone can easily copy and paste original work and claim as their own. Here, chances of plagiarism are very high. How can you protect copyright of your content on digital platform?

Blockchain enables publishers to protect their copyrights and others to validate the source authentication. Blockchain can even create digital signatures. These are as unique and protected as your finger prints. You can embed your digital signature in your PDF, eBook or any other form of digital content to claim your ownership. Remember, this data cannot be tempered so it’s safe forever. Isn’t the blockchain a boon for publishing in this case?

• No Centralized Authority

As of now, in traditional system, there is no centralized authority that takes care of copyright and license management.

However, it is easy to manage copyright, distribute profits, secure ownership and facilitate collaboration with centralised nature of smart contracts and distributed ledger technology.

• Complex Revenue Channels

What happens when any work gets published? Its revenue reaches to its ultimate entitled after passing through lot many intermediaries. Because of which, very less portion of actual revenue gets into the pocket of original author / publisher. And is it even reaches to the person who owns right? Not sure, right?

Blockchain has a great solution again. On this platform, owners of eBooks and self-publishers can manage their revenue and transaction channels. In addition, with blockchain-based smart contracts, they can potentially track and accept sales transactions in an easier manner.

Read More: How smart contracts work for publishing industry?

Parting Thoughts On Blockchain For Publishing Industry

Though it’s too early for authors to trust this technology, the day of “blockchain for books” is not far.  Various companies are trying to solve the problems of publishing through enterprise blockchain development technology. To name a few, they are:

With blockchain in use, it will dealt with several issues such as of piracy, copyright, lack of transparency when it comes to the royalty etc. Well, the aim of blockchain for publishing is help the authors and provide them much more benefit then what they are getting now.  Thus there is no denial in the fact that blockchain is the future whether be it any industry. And, particularly talking about the publishing industry, blockchain do hold the potential to bring a positive impact on to the industry. Soon, it will have strong footprint in this industry with its several salient features provided by it to the users.