This is because the typical publisher value-add of financing, marketing, technology and distribution through retail channels doesn't translate well to the digital world.
The issue of peer review came up in many cases; the OA debate seems to re-ignite concerns about publisher value-add being based on free academic labour.
Last fall, when Apple's newsstand began, publishers criticized the tech company for not releasing subscriber data, which publishers value because they can use it to customize ads and show advertisers who they are reaching.
Publishers value the referral traffic they get from Facebook, but they increasingly fear that readers will remain on the social media site for news content rather than visit the publishers' own properties.
The 22 year old chief developer, Lukas Rieder, says they want to become world market leader and "change the publishers' value creation chain along the way" in an interview.
The recession and internet piracy has seen the music publisher's value plummet while it remains saddled with £2.6bn of debt.
Chillingo COO Ed Rumley said in a 2012 interview that a publisher's value remains in its ability to help indie developers put a bit more polish into their games before release, as well as offer its marketing clout.
AOL, another big online publisher, is valued at less than its revenue.
The children's book awards, decided by large committees of librarians, are important to parents and publishers, who value the gold and silver stickers as symbols of quality and buy accordingly.
The gorgeous cover helped, I'm sure, plus I was lucky that the manuscript was picked up by a publisher that values grassroots book fans, works enthusiastically with independent book stores and has a creative marketing team.
So while publishers obviously value consistency, a novelist's career depends on showing that the first promising book was not a fluke; further, that the precept held by some critics that writers have only one book in them is not true for many novelists.
