If anything shows the likelihood that publishing democracy will be short lived and so by my reckoning is a fad the emergence of powerful blog networks is one of them.

Perhaps one of the most impressive is Gawker Media who Om Malik, by way of this graphic chart says has surpassed the 60,000,000 (60 million) page views per month.

Not only is this phenomenal it certainly reinforces the reality that in order to thrive and survive on the web and to create markets like that powerful thought and organisation is required. The point that strikes me about this network is that it consists of some 15 sites. 3 or 4 may be dominant (the longest established) but even so it requires the interlinking of 15 different micro sites to gain that viewer ship. Here is the combination of Mark Cuban’s words about the dangers and costs of attracting attention in an a la carte market and the words of Om Malik’s friend Bill Tai, who I quoted yesterday:

publishing is a few moguls make a lot of money off the people who love to write.

If this is a sign of the future of online publishing, then I suspect the future of book publishing so far as the web affects it, will head the same direction.