By looking at what is happening inside the industry, we can see that some of the fears about the future of the publishing industry were misplaced.
- Professor John Thompson
In his book Merchants of Culture, Professor John Thompson recounts a conversation with the head of media asset development at a large US publishing house. The topic is the impact and future of digital publishing.
His interviewee, anonymised as Steve, has come from the music industry, where he has seen the digital revolution disrupting traditional models. Tasked with shaping the future of a leading publishing house, Steve is struggling to convince his colleagues to think differently about books and to embrace the digital revolution. He says: “A book is not a book. Books are categories. Books are types. Books are different styles of things.”
Thompson is interested in the changing structure of the book publishing industry as the digital revolution transforms the processes and products of the publishing business in ways that are both visible and invisible to the consumer. The outcome of his present research will be a book that is due to be published in 2017, in which he will describe the volatile, contested environment responsible for delivering texts to millions of readers in an ever-increasing range of formats.
John B.Thompson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.
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Image Credit: The District
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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