Before Amazon. Publishing Industry and Cultural Mutations

The Oxford Handbook of Publishing, 2019

How has book publishing shaped and reshaped the modern world? Since the advent of moveable type, books have moved into position as the signal element that defines culture. While this chapter places an emphasis on English-language publishing, it also draws on original discussions with international publishers and editors, providing a brief overview of the history of book publishing in a variety of countries. Starting with the Venetian printers, the chapter moves through the Inquisition to the pre-modern age, briefly discussing the consistent entanglement of book publishing and authority, which perceives books and their publishers as potentially devastating threats or powerful allies.

Anglistik, 2015

In his influential account of the rise of English literary studies, Terry Eagleton claims that literature is a key moral ideology for our post-secular modernity (1996, 27). The literary author's creative process provides an image of non-alienated labour, while the literary canon "appears as one of the few enclaves in which the creative values expunged from the face of English society by industrial capitalism can be celebrated and affirmed" (1996, 19). The idea that literature is an anti-industrial and non-alienated enclave is surprisingly tenacious. In her recent study of the battle between independent and chain bookstores, Laura Miller (2006) suggests the settled image of literary reading as something deeply humanizing and enlivening was activated by retailers resisting the rationalization threatened by big-box stores. They presented neighbourhoods supplied by "local" independents as holistic communities full of warm human beings eager to make connections with neighbours, whereas the big-box retailers were said to be suited only to strip-mall impersonality. They are all commercial enterprises, yet one side got to claim that encouraging the formation of authentic literary communities was primary amongst its lofty goals, while the other was presented as driven only by materialistic interests. Ted Striphas argues related points in his work on Amazon's expedient use of the idea that it is primarily a seller of good books. Literature's aura has been a clear cover for the company's real aims, which include revolutionizing the distribution of consumer goods-to be continued in a dramatic fashion when it starts using drones for deliveries-and affiliation with an elite roster of global technology and "digital utility" companies such as Google and Facebook. Striphas argues that via Kindle e-books in particular, Amazon has been working to turn the reading process into a "recordable, transmissible thing" (2010, 304)-a thing that can be mined and potentially used for productive processes like any other kind of user data. He connects these efforts to a broader transformation, in which "the widespread private ownership of saleable consumer goods" is giving way to the temporary licensing of intellectual properties via Digital Rights Management (DRM), and consumer capitalism is morphing into something that is-under banners of choice and interactivity-more controlled, patrolled, and delimited than ever before (Striphas 2009, 16). In this essay we comment briefly on how contemporary literary markets might be conceived in relation to the political-economic realities lately driving the ownership and controlled distribution of literary properties. Materialist studies of the literary field have often productively focused on a centre-periphery split and the exceptions to it: authors from the world's rural, remote, postcolonial, underdeveloped, or otherwise underprivileged peripheries are drawn into over-privileged centres of production, their work then being disseminated out first to readers at the centre and then unevenly to the distant peripheries from which they "originated" (Brouillette 2007; English 2005; Huggan 2001; Whitlock 2006). In the first part of our essay we discuss how concern about this process has been voiced by readers-in particular, by readers who identify with those peripheries and object to the concentration of power in the hands of those with access to elite capital and possessed of the will to succeed on the accepted terms. We look at the case of the reception of Aravind Adiga's prizewinning novel The White

2011

The book market is one of the last media markets affected by digitization, so the question is whether this market follows the same patterns as other media industries before. Our study analyses if these digitization processes lead to a stronger market orientation thus commercialization of a market that traditionally has been understood as a market of cultural goods. We conduct a market analysis and a survey among authors, publishers and booksellers in Germany and Switzerland to answer this question. Our findings support the notion of an increased market orientation among publishers and booksellers. However, the tendencies towards commercialization cannot be attributed to digitation alone but might happen even without it.

Publishing Research Quarterly, 2009

In his influential account of the rise of English literary studies, Terry Eagleton claims that literature is a key moral ideology for our post-secular modernity (1996, 27). The literary author's creative process provides an image of non-alienated labour, while the literary canon "appears as one of the few enclaves in which the creative values expunged from the face of English society by industrial capitalism can be celebrated and affirmed" (1996, 19). The idea that literature is an anti-industrial and non-alienated enclave is surprisingly tenacious. In her recent study of the battle between independent and chain bookstores, Laura suggests the settled image of literary reading as something deeply humanizing and enlivening was activated by retailers resisting the rationalization threatened by big-box stores. They presented neighbourhoods supplied by "local" independents as holistic communities full of warm human beings eager to make connections with neighbours, whereas the big-box retailers were said to be suited only to strip-mall impersonality. They are all commercial enterprises, yet one side got to claim that encouraging the formation of authentic literary communities was primary amongst its lofty goals, while the other was presented as driven only by materialistic interests.

2014

As a vital field of scholarship, book history has now reached a stage of maturity where its early work can be reassessed and built upon. That is the goal of New Directions in Book History. This series will publish monographs in English that employ advanced methods and open up new frontiers in research, written by younger, mid-career, and senior scholars. Its scope is global, extending to the Western and non-Western worlds and to all historical periods from antiquity to the 21st century, including studies of script, print, and post-print cultures. New Directions in Book History, then, will be broadly inclusive but always in the vanguard. It will experiment with inventive methodologies, explore unexplored archives, debate overlooked issues, challenge prevailing theories, study neglected subjects, and demonstrate the relevance of book history to other academic fields. Every title in this series will address the evolution of the historiography of the book, and every one will point to new directions in book scholarship. New Directions in Book History will be published in three formats: single-author monographs; edited collections of essays in single or multiple volumes; and shorter works produced through Palgrave's e-book (EPUB2) 'Pivot' stream. Book proposals should emphasize the innovative aspects of the work, and should be sent to either of the two series editors:

Publishing Research Quarterly, 2010

Executive Summary: This master’s thesis researches the Norwegian book publishing industry, and the capabilities of incumbent publishers in ensuring long-term competitiveness and industry health. The impact of digitalization and the disruptive potential it presents to the publishing industry is the phenomenon deeming the thesis relevant. Departing from the resource-based view, the thesis applies dynamic capabilities theory in the creation of an initial framework investigating whether incumbent publishers have the capabilities required in a dynamic context characterized by digitalization. The initial framework emphasize that capabilities related to sensing market changes, seizing opportunities, and managing threats and reconfigurations are needed to succeed in the future publishing industry. However, distinctive aspects of the Norwegian publishing industry are highlighted: the Book Agreement legitimizing retail price maintenance, the level of vertical integration, and a standardization of contracts with authors. The distinctive aspects contribute to incumbents dominating the industry, and are analyzed to constitute sources of inertia. Consequently, dynamic capabilities theory is found insufficient in explaining how incumbent Norwegian publishers are to be relevant in a digital era. Thus, the need for a new framework emerges, resulting in the application of ecosystem and activity system theory. The subsequent analysis shows that thinking of publishing as an ecosystem reveals the potentially detrimental effect of leveraging bottlenecks and extracting, rather than sharing, value. On the same note, incumbent publishers are found to be dominators in the activity system, although they have the capability of coordinating activities in their network. The findings require the need for reframing the publishing industry in order to reveal the potential of thinking of the publishing business model in new terms. The contribution of the thesis is that aspects related to openness and flexibility are what is deemed necessary for incumbent publishers to stay relevant in the digital era. However, important to note is that the contribution is not to be considered definitive, as there are important aspects to the book industry in general, e.g. the promotion of national literature, which is not considered in the thesis. Nevertheless, the thesis aims to be a source of inspiration to incumbent publishers and industry stakeholders alike, as it casts new light on a traditional and important national industry.

Enterprise and Society, 2009

The current plight of independent booksellers has the misfortune to be the latest in a series of plights. Laura Miller's Reluctant Capitalists explains that their troubles are long-standing and systemic, due not only to their competition with the chain-stores, Amazon, and each other but also to computer technology, to changes in American consumer culture, and to the means whereby publishers and retailers vie for the profit of a sale. Miller notes how conglomerate publishing favours conglomerate bookselling, and vice versa. Independents' battles with the chains go back as far as the Coolidge administration, and for years they held their own: 'According to US Government figures, there were thirty groups of bookstore chains in 1929. Between them, they owned 349 of the country's 2,647 bookstores, and accounted for 31.6 per cent of bookstore sales. Three decades later, those numbers had barely changed' (42). Then came suburban expansion, shopping malls, B. Dalton, and Waldenbooks. 'By the early 1980s, Walden was opening eighty to ninety stores a year; in 1981, with 704 branches, it became the first bookstore chain to have outlets in all fifty states' (45). By 1982 B. Dalton and Waldenbooks had captured nearly a quarter of all US book sales. By 1997, Borders and Barnes & Noble had taken over, together accounting for 43.3 per cent of bookstore sales. Other forces gathered against the independents. Steadily improved computerization and the technologies it permits-barcoding, inventory management, the Internet-favour economies of scale that deep-pocket chains are better able to turn to advantage. 'Far from the Internet resulting in a more decentralized bookselling environment, the shakeout among online booksellers contributed to the growing concentration of the book retail market' (53).