A new publishing venture, the London Publishing Partnership, has made me reflect on the tide of new competition digital technologies are unleashing on the industry. Most of the comment about tech and books has focussed on the retailing end, the battle of the iPad/Kindle and how e-reading will affect the sales of physical books. Less attention has been paid to the earlier parts of the supply chain. But digital modes of working and especially print-on-demand technologies are starting to make a big difference to the process of publishing and potentially to the structure of what is a highly concentrated industry.

The London Publishing Partnership is a brand new publishing services company formed by Richard Baggaley, an experienced publisher who most recently worked at a university press. The new company offers either all or part of the production package: editing, typesetting through printing to distribution and marketing. Customers so far include the London School of Economics, for a publication on The Future of Finance, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research, for the sale of physical copies of its very successful e-books. An organisation with its own strong brand or natural market (such as a client base) could obviously find it useful to outsource the production of publications, and might well not need to shelter under a large publisher's brand and reputation. But in addition, authors who self-publish some books (I've blogged in the past about John Kay's DIY-publishing) could in future decide to outsource the practicalities.

According to Richard Baggaley, two key technology-related developments have made LPP possible.

One is print-on-demand technology. LPP uses a print-on-demand company to produce the physical copies in small quantities, minimising warehousing and stock levels. This is less risky, less costly and more flexible than conventional large print runs. Break even print runs are very small – no more than a few tens of copies. Many large publishers are already doing this too, but aren't so upfront about it (with exceptions – for example, Faber for its Faber Finds and Bloomsbury Academic.

The second is the scope for selling books online. LPP has some key accounts for physical distribution and sales but otherwise will sell over the internet. How successful this proves is, of course, a marketing question. Marketing muscle is a key advantage that remains to the biggest publishing houses, both through affording ad campaigns and buying space in bookstores and through the ability to get attention from reviewers; but online word-of-mouth dynamics may be able to challenge that – and, again, some individual authors and organisations have their own reputations and marketing channels.

So all in all, it seems to me that the conditions are ripe now for some successful new entry into the publishing business after decades of consolidation into a very small number of global publishing titans and a somewhat larger number of small publishers including the important university presses and a few successful independents. Perhaps the new entrants, including self-publishing authors, will only ever form a competitive fringe, without really affecting industry structure. But I hope the impact of the technologies will be more dramatic than that.

Anyway, I'll revisit the London Publishing Partnership in 6 months or so to see how it's going for them.