Information technologies have changed the way that words are reproduced and distributed.
The increasing pace of technology and business innovation has resulted in a proliferation of content in a variety of new forms such as Wikipedia, Wikitravel, Encyclopedia of Life, Newser, and many more. Participation and collaboration are the values of a new creative class, one Samuel Johnson, writing only when paid to write something, would never have understood. Bill Burger describes the clash of cultures between these new models and the traditional world of publishing and the resultant suing by fearful authors and publishers.
He outlines the historical context of what has happened in publishing from the days of monks copying texts when one copy was more valuable than the content, on through the invention of the printing press, the Industrial Revolution and the technology revolution. Burger lays out the truth of what people value today in terms of content and its distribution and what the publishing industry needs to do in order to stay relevant.