section_path: Professions involving mass media/Publishing
section_name: Publishing
paragraph_text: Publishing
  
  Publishing is the industry concerned with the production of literature or information – the activity of making information available for public view. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers.
  
  Traditionally, the term refers to the distribution of printed works such as books and newspapers. With the advent of digital information systems and the Internet, the scope of publishing has expanded to include websites, blogs and the like.
  
  As a business, publishing includes the development, marketing, production, and distribution of newspapers, magazines, books, literary works, musical works, software and other works dealing with information.
  
  Publication is also important as a legal concept; (1) as the process of giving formal notice to the world of a significant intention, for example, to marry or enter bankruptcy, and; (2) as the essential precondition of being able to claim defamation; that is, the alleged libel must have been published.