Blockchain and book publishing: The No Point in Stopping Project

The Australian book publishing industry, a key copyright industry, continues to adapt to a rapidly changing landscape and digital disruption is encouraging new relationships between publishers, authors, and audiences. Blockchain technologies present an opportunity to decentralise production processes in ways that could radically enhance access to culture while creating new avenues for commercial exploitation and new incentives for production and distribution. The project is the outcome of a two-year collaboration between researchers from the Creative Industries, Law, and Science and Engineering Faculties at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), in Brisbane, Australia, and the Brisbane-based micro-publisher Tiny Owl Workshop (see Appendix 1). The No Point in Stopping project was funded by QUT’s Institute of Future Environments and a 2018 Catapult grant, a funding scheme designed to seed innovative transdisciplinary research that responds to the needs of industry, and in this case, the Australian book publishing industry. Project Research Team: Associate Professor Mark David Ryan, Dr Phoebe Macrossan, Dr Michael Adams, Dr Cameron Cliff, Dr Kylie Pappalardo, Professor Nic Suzor, Dr Suriadi Suriadi, Professor Arthur ter Hofstede, and Ms Sue Wright Special thanks to Ms Kate Eltham, Mr Craig Bolland, and Mr Brydon Wang