‘Content is king, and it will remain king - tech will come and go...'

‘Content is king, and it will remain king-tech will come and go... It's not I don't believe in tech, I do. But I also know that content is king. Not to quote Rupert Murdoch, but he used to say: ‘You have to own the pipes, but if you don't have anything flowing through it, what are the pipes going to do? ' We developed technology to market and sell our content, but the technology doesn't come first. You got to have the content and then get the technology behind it...

One of the problems with traditional publishing is that the word innovation is never used. That's because you're protecting your base business, getting books into bookstores. As bookstore shelves diminish, one has to figure out a way to spread the word to get to the public. But in traditional publishing you can only market a book for a certain length of time because you have to market the next books, and you're sitting on a balance sheet that has huge advances. We have the opportunity to play and that's what we do.'

Jane Friedman, CEO of backlist ebook publisher Open Road Media