The economics of information

In Europe before the 1450s, books were precious, rare objects and were usually copied by hand over a period of months or years. Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press changed the economics of information distribution. The result of this change were less expensive books, greater literacy, and a challenge to those who benefited from restricting information. Today, the rise of the Internet has eliminated distribution costs as a barrier to entering the publishing market. With minimal equipment, anyone can publish his opinion in a blog or book, record and distribute a podcast, or deliver video content. What do these changes mean for technical communication? And what lesson can we learn from the changes that took place 560 years ago?

Text by Sarah O’Keefe

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The economics of information

In the last 20 years, the economics of information have shifted toward the author and away from the publishers (or gatekeepers):

  • It’s possible to record high-quality audio and video with inexpensive equipment.
  • The Internet provides numerous publishing platforms (Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, Lulu, Amazon, iTunes, and so on)


For technical communicators, the possibilities are endless: we can develop books, ebooks, PDFs, web content, screencasts, podcasts, digital videos, wikis, and more. But which of these platforms will succeed?

The text cycle

To understand the economics of information, it’s helpful to break down the process of information development. I am using Terje Hillesund’s text cycle, which has the following phases:

  • Writing (authoring)
  • Production
  • Storing
  • Representation
  • Distribution
  • Reading (consumption)


Traditional storytelling combines all of these phases into a single event: one ...

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