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For a startup it’s really gratifying when thought leaders rally to the cause.

We had a moment like that earlier this week when Tim O’Reilly blogged about “Reinventing the Book in the Age of the Web.”   Read his post soon, but here are a couple of key points:

• “O’Reilly, as authors and publishers, has long been interested in exploring how the online medium changes the presentation, narrative and structure of the book, not just its price or format”
• “The web itself, full of links to sources, opposing or supporting points of view, multimedia, and reader commentary, provides countless lessons about how books need to change when they move online.”

My career includes time spent working in the B2B content aggregation space. It was always interesting to me to see how subscriptions to the printed newspaper ran quite inexpensively ($20-30 per month, but sometimes gratis) while we could host a database of newspapers and receive subscription payments in the thousands per month.  We were able to do this because we configured the content for the medium in which it was consumed, and used that medium to add intrinsic value that our customers were willing to pay for.  Making newspaper content searchable, comprehensive, immediate, customized, and easy to access and consume led to sales.

It strikes me that this is O’Reilly’s argument with respect to books, and it is certainly Symtext’s.  Simply offering books and chapters online isn’t what gets customers excited.  It’s the value that can be added to those books and chapters that gets customers excited, and that is what drives enjoyment, learning, consumption and purchase.

This leads to the problematic part of adding value to content, and that is the fragmented demands of the crowd. It’s one thing to say we want to add value, but what, and for whom?  Adding value can be tantamount to customization; regardless, there are costs to be wary of.  So here’s a sacrilegious thought: what if we stopped trying to guess, and let specifiers (university professors, for example) — who already act as gateways to small, focused clusters of consumers (like students, to follow the example) — have more control over what they want? Let them determine what sorts of web value they’d like to add to the content they feel they need.  Who knows what they’d do if given the chance to transform the textbook into an interactive learning space?  (What we now call a Liquid Textbook.)

If you agree with me so far, then you might also agree with me on a possible way forward: emergent communities forming around content, conversing, creating culture — adding their own value — and transforming previously static content in a way that will lead to real, intrinsic value for readers, be they students, professionals, or consumers.  In turn that should translate to higher adoptions and less piracy for publishers.

(Written with input from @rayluk and @acroll)