A DAD, egad!

I received a flyer across my desk the other day which offered to explain ‘Why Every Publisher Needs a DAD.’ Of course they do, I thought, goes without saying, even in this digital age. The flyer then went on to explain that some publishers might want more than one DAD. I should have known it wouldn’t be so simple. A DAD isn’t someone you build go-karts with (à la Dangerous Book for Boys) or give birthday socks to with impunity, but rather a Digital Asset Distributor. Illuminatingly, the flyer explained that there was no consensus on what a DAD actually did, but it was something to do with doing what book distributors do now. Now you know. I put the flyer down when it got to the stage of asking whether publishers should become DADs themselves. Not a role I have to worry about. I shall stick to my knitting.