Summary
This paper presents selected examples of some of the key problems that publishers face, when it comes to digital publications, area which is lately in huge expansion. After more than ten years of development the number of unresolved issues in this field is nowadays possibly even higher than in the beginning. The topics of great importance are e. g. the development of successful models in the e-business and exploration of consumers’ attitudes and decisions that still remain an unknown. There has to be distinguished between the institutional, so called B to B business, and the business with individuals (B to C). In the first area there are many well established and successful products, e.g. for lawyers, industry, libraries etc., but their number is much less in the B to C-area. However, due to the mobile devices as Smartphones, Kindle, iPad and others, the latter is lately experiencing strong and rapid development. Strict copyright protection, which guarantees amortization of the investments made into a new digital product, will be decisive factor for the products coming from the publishing industry. Also the governments have to restrain from overall open access tendencies. Without such legal guarantees the diversity and quality of communication is heavily endangered.

Keywords:
digital publishing, open access, freemium, new distribution channels, price policy.

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