Book Wars

Höfundur: John B. Thompson (Útgáfa: 1)
Book Wars

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This book tells the story of the turbulent decades when the book publishing industry collided with the great technological revolution of our time. From the surge of ebooks to the self-publishing explosion and the growing popularity of audiobooks, Book Wars provides a comprehensive and fine-grained account of technological disruption in one of our most important and successful creative industries. Like other sectors, publishing has been thrown into disarray by the digital revolution.

The foundation on which this industry had been based for 500 years - the packaging and sale of words and images in the form of printed books - was called into question by a technological revolution that enabled symbolic content to be stored, manipulated and transmitted quickly and cheaply. Publishers and retailers found themselves facing a proliferation of new players who were offering new products and services and challenging some of their most deeply held principles and beliefs.

The old industry was suddenly thrust into the limelight as bitter conflicts erupted between publishers and new entrants, including powerful new tech giants who saw the world in very different ways. The book wars had begun. While ebooks were at the heart of many of these conflicts, Thompson argues that the most fundamental consequences lie elsewhere. The print-on-paper book has proven to be a remarkably resilient cultural form, but the digital revolution has transformed the industry in other ways, spawning new players which now wield unprecedented power and giving rise to an array of new publishing forms.

Nánar um bókina

Útgefandi
Polity
ISBN
9781509546794
Print ISBN
9781509546787
Format
ePub
Útgáfa
1
Höfundar
John B. Thompson
Tungumál
English
Útgefið
2021-03-04
Prent takmörkun á líftíma
100
Prent takmörkun
10
Afritunar takmörkun
2

Kaflar

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • Notes
  • 1 The Faltering Rise of the Ebook
  • The origins and rise of the ebook
  • The differentiated pattern of ebook sales: delving beneath the surface
  • Explaining the variations
  • Form vs format
  • Beyond the US
  • Notes
  • 2 Re-inventing the Book
  • The life and times of the digital short
  • A radical experiment
  • Ebooks as apps
  • Re-inventing the book as app
  • False dawn
  • Notes
  • 3 The Backlist Wars
  • Opening salvo
  • Bringing the greats back to life
  • The limits of backlist-only ebook publishing
  • Notes
  • 4 Google Trouble
  • The search engine wars
  • Settlements come and go
  • How big is a snippet?
  • Whither Google Books?
  • Notes
  • 5 Amazon’s Ascent
  • The rise of Amazon
  • The DOJ weighs in
  • Stand-off with Hachette
  • Market power
  • An uneasy truce
  • Notes
  • 6 Struggles for Visibility
  • Visibility in the bricks-and-mortar world
  • The morphing of mediated visibility
  • The triumph of the algorithm
  • Reaching out to readers
  • Literature’s Switzerland
  • Visibility through discounting
  • Visibility in a digital age
  • Notes
  • 7 The Self-publishing Explosion
  • From vanity to indie publishing
  • Self-publishing in the ebook age
  • A beautiful book of your own
  • Amazon enters the self-publishing field
  • A spectrum of publishing services
  • The hidden continent
  • Estimating the indies
  • Parallel universes, multiple pathways
  • Notes
  • 8 Crowdfunding Books
  • The rise of crowdfunding
  • Crowdfunding as direct-to-consumer publishing
  • Reader curation
  • The pull of the mainstream
  • Notes
  • 9 Bookflix
  • Scribd’s wager
  • The rise and fall of Oyster
  • Kindle Unlimited enters the scene
  • Subscription in the ecosystem of books
  • Notes
  • 10 The New Orality
  • The development of audiobooks
  • The rise of Audible
  • Audiobooks become routine
  • The audiobook supply chain
  • Producing audiobooks
  • Performing the page
  • Books in the audio-visual mix
  • Notes
  • 11 Storytelling in Social Media
  • Building YouTube for stories
  • Sharing stories for free
  • From stories to studios
  • From stories to books
  • Notes
  • 12 Old Media, New Media
  • Digital disruption in the creative industries
  • Data power
  • Nurturing content, colonizing culture
  • Publishing in the digital age
  • Taking readers seriously
  • Books in the digital age
  • Notes
  • Conclusion: Worlds in Flux
  • Worlds in flux
  • Appendix 1: Sales Data from a Large US Trade Publisher
  • Appendix 2: Note on Research Methods
  • Notes
  • Index
  • End User License Agreement