Оглавление
John B. Thompson. Book Wars
Table of Contents
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Guide
Pages
Book Wars. The Digital Revolution in Publishing
Copyright Page
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
Notes
Chapter 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
Chapter 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
Chapter 3 THE BACKLIST WARS
Opening salvo
Bringing the greats back to life
The limits of backlist-only ebook publishing
Notes
Chapter 4 GOOGLE TROUBLE
The search engine wars
Settlements come and go
How big is a snippet?
Whither Google Books?
Notes
Chapter 5 AMAZON’S ASCENT
The rise of Amazon
The DOJ weighs in
Stand-off with Hachette
Market power
An uneasy truce
Notes
Chapter 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
Chapter 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
Chapter 8 CROWDFUNDING BOOKS
The rise of crowdfunding
Crowdfunding as direct-to-consumer publishing
Reader curation
The pull of the mainstream
Notes
Chapter 9 BOOKFLIX
Scribd’s wager
The rise and fall of Oyster
Kindle Unlimited enters the scene
Subscription in the ecosystem of books
Notes
Chapter 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
Chapter 11 STORYTELLING IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Building YouTube for stories
Sharing stories for free
From stories to studios
From stories to books
Notes
Chapter 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
Appendix 1 SALES DATA FROM A LARGE US TRADE PUBLISHER
Appendix 2 NOTE ON RESEARCH METHODS
Notes
INDEX
POLITY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
Отрывок из книги
John B. Thompson
The book publishing industry is no exception – it too has been caught up in the turmoil brought about by the digital revolution. And, in some ways, there is more at stake here than with other media industries: not only is the book publishing industry the oldest of the media industries, it is also an industry that has played a pivotal role in the shaping of modern culture, from the scientific revolution in early modern Europe to the profusion of literatures and forms of knowledge that have become such an important part of our lives and societies today. So what happens when the oldest of our media industries collides with the great technological revolution of our time? What happens when a media industry that has been with us for more than 500 years and is deeply embedded in our history and culture finds itself confronted by, and threatened by, a new set of technologies that are radically different from those that have underpinned its practices and business models for centuries? If you were working in the book publishing industry during the first decade of the twenty-first century, you wouldn’t have had to look far to find reasons to feel anxious about your future: the music industry was in freefall, the newspaper industry was experiencing a sharp decline in revenue and some of the big tech companies were becoming seriously interested in the digitization of books. Why wouldn’t the book industry be swept up in the maelstrom unleashed by the digital revolution? No hard-headed manager or disinterested analyst would have been sanguine about the chances of the book publishing industry surviving its encounter with the digital revolution unscathed.
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We can understand why this matters in terms of the level of ebook uptake by linking it to the user experience. From the viewpoint of the user, reading narrative linear text on an e-reading device like a Kindle is generally a good experience: you can move easily and swiftly from one page to the next, the text flows smoothly and you, the reader, flow with it from beginning to end. This works particularly well for genre fiction: it’s a fast, immersive read and there is nothing in the device itself, and in the way that the text is presented on the screen, that would obstruct you or slow you down as you follow the plot and move towards the denouement. As those in the business say, the ‘form factor’ is good, where ‘form factor’ refers here to the quality of the experience of reading a particular book on a particular device. The experience of reading genre fiction on an e-reading device like a Kindle is probably as good as – maybe even better than, given the ability to change the type size, etc. – the experience of reading the same text on paper.
However, with non-linear texts that may be more practical in character and/or heavily illustrated, the form factor is nowhere near as good. These non-linear texts are not necessarily meant to be read from beginning to end. They may not tell a story that the reader follows, page by page, in a sequential fashion. A non-linear text like a cookbook or a travel book or a practical how-to book may require the reader or user to jump back and forth, getting the information they need and then perhaps dipping in at another point in the text. They might be used more as a reference work that the reader returns to time and again, possibly to the same place or to another part of the text. For non-linear texts of this kind, the experience of reading or using them on an e-reading device like a Kindle is much less appealing than it is with straight linear texts. And if you then add illustrations, the appeal is likely to diminish still further, especially for readers who have e-reading devices that use black and white e-ink technology, like the Kindle.
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