If you're a writer, you've probably heard horror stories about the publishing industry — books that are rejected by publisher after publisher, books that sit in submission piles for years, books that are published but basically disappear without publisher support.
Infinity was developed with private financing and without publisher support for a while, but in the home stretch, in 2001, the team started looking for a partner.
Asked to describe her foremost concern, Carolyn Reidy, of Simon & Schuster, said, "In the digital world, it is possible for authors to publish without publishers.
Microsoft was originally criticised for disallowing self-publishing on Xbox One which appeared to put the platform out of reach for many small studios without publishers.
Without publishers performing this and other important, often invisible, tasks scholarly communication would be far more chaotic and the systems virtually impossible to use.The creation and management of the journal title as a "brand" is an essential component of the smooth operation of the system.
Christopher Lee Lordd of Misrule by Christopher Lee 354pp, Orion, £18.99 Niv: The Authorised Biography of David Niven by Graham Lord 356pp, Orion, £18.99 Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography by Piers Paul Read 640pp, Simon & Schuster £20 Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without publishers issuing a sackful of showbusiness biographies big enough to give Santa back trouble.
It's by no means a clear-cut issue, but the debates suggested that huge individual successes are leaving smaller developers genuinely confident that digital distribution will enable them to move ahead without publishers in the future – a potentially huge shift for the gaming industry.
At the close of the first day, Square Enix's Ian Livingstone chaired a controversial debate on whether the future for developers lay in communicating directly with customers without publishers intervening at all, while Jerry Johnson, of Xbox LIVE, went on to explore how Microsoft's online service had evolved from simple gaming to a full entertainment hub involving Sky, Facebook and Netflix movies.
Publishers have to add one line of code and hyperlinks will appear for readers without publishers having to link.
The thing is, with apologies to Peter and Gordon, I don't know how long I can "stay," as a reader and a writer, in a world without publishers, specifically without the editors they employ.
Sometimes successful DIY or self published authors can negotiate better deals without a publisher.
