One big way that book publishing startups can succeed now

Once again: article by tech sector guy who has no fscking idea how the publishing sector works, or even what it sells.

Clue: if you ever wondered why publishing seems so staid and static, it's because it's not about books, it's about contracts. Author/publisher contracts have the same effect on publishing industry innovation that patent trolls have on the tech sector -- only much worse and, weirdly, much better. Worse, because just about every published author out there is licensing their IP with strings attached, rather than doing work-for-hire: this makes it hard to develop new sales channels or explore new pricing structures. Better, because this ensures that the folks who produce the content get paid, as opposed to being milked like cows.

If I was going to disrupt publishing, I'd start by hiring lawyers, pointing them at the existing shitpile of contract boilerplate the industry runs on, and telling them, "redesign this mess, it's not fit for purpose". And you should use that as an acid test whenever you stumble across one of these bien-pensant "publishing is ripe for disruption" think-pieces. If they don't realize the IP contracts underpinning publishing -- and the sales accounting and royalty systems that implement the contracts in code -- are at the root of the industry's inertia, they don't know nuthin'.