ESRC SCOTTISH DOCTORAL TRAINING CENTRE INFORMATION SCIENCE PATHWAY TRAINING 2016 12th-13th April - Room 5.B.14 – Edinburgh Napier University Sighthill campus Dr. Christina Banou, Assistant Professor in Book Policy and Publishing, Dep. of Archives, Library Science and Museology, Faculty of Information Science and Informatics, Ionian University, Ioannou Theotoki 72, Corfu 49100, Greece, Tel: +30-26610-87416, email: cbanou@ionio.gr

1. Information in the Publishing Value
Chain and Academic Publishing
ESRC SCOTTISH DOCTORAL TRAINING CENTRE
INFORMATION SCIENCE PATHWAY TRAINING 2016
12th-13th April - Room 5.B.14 – Edinburgh Napier University
Sighthill campus
Dr. Christina Banou,
Assistant Professor in Book Policy and Publishing,
Dep. of Archives, Library Science and Museology,
Faculty of Information Science and Informatics,
Ionian University,
Ioannou Theotoki 72, Corfu 49100, Greece,
Tel: +30-26610-87416, email: cbanou@ionio.gr

2. WE WILL FOCUS ON THE
FOLLOWING
 Overview of the publishing industry nowadays:
features, aims and values, current trends,
 The impact of new information and communication
technologies on the publishing industry,
 The publishing chain as value chain
 Publishing chain and academic publishing
 New business models in publishing,
 New publishing models,
 The role of information in the publishing activity.
 The publishing chain as information chain,
 How information adds value
 How information develops strategies and policies
 Building communities of readers / researchers
 Reader engagement

3. Considering the book in all its
forms
 Transformations of the book: co-existence
of printed, digital and electronic
publications.
 The book is constantly developing nowadays
due to information technologies, multimedia
and publishing models
 Reading on ebooks, tablets, smartphones…
 The medium on which we read change the
way we write, communicate, create and
think

4. THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY NOWADAYS:
CURRENT TRENDS AND ISSUES (1)
 Mergers and acquisitions of publishing houses during
the past decades, leading to the
 Dominance of the large publishing companies and
conglomerations.
 The impact of information technologies that brings
about
 New publishing models (open access, printing on
demand, self- publishing, crowdsourcing etc.)
 New business models (such as pay per use models,
micropayments, crowdfunding, embedded
advertising…)
 “New” consumer behaviour,
 “New” information behaviour,
 “New” reading behaviour,
 “New” promotion strategies due to information
technologies

5. THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY NOWADAYS:
CURRENT TRENDS AND ISSUES (2)
 Changes in bookselling. Chain bookstores vs
traditional brick and mortar bookstores. But …
problems in chain bookstores nowadays .
 Electronic bookstores. New trends in marketing
and promotion,
 Bestselling culture,
 Rise of literary agents,
 User / reader engagement. User participation:
Member, not customer.
 Online communities of readers,
 Use of social media,
 Convergence of media,
 Transformations of the book

6. RE-CONSIDERING PUBLISHING
VALUES
 Globalization,
 Convergence,
 Access,
 Innovation,
 Discoverability
 Redefinition of roles?
 Demand for friendly books
 User / reader engagement,
 Direct communication between publisher and reader
 Transformations of the book,
 Role of Information.,
 Taste of the reading audience ,
 Technology, technology…

7. Abundance of information
 The abundance of information in the book
publishing industry requires
 A. “new” strategies for the publishers so as
to further and better inform the reading
audience and possible customers and thus
promote their books and,
 B. new mediums and tools for the readers
in order to be better and fully informed
according to their information needs and
reading expectations.

8. “Managing the scarcity of good
authors and content”
 “In a world of abundance, the publishers offer a
vital service in selecting authors and developing
their content to meet readers’ needs. They manage
the author’s brands and focus readers on the
books they have selected. That service is worth
paying for when time is scarce. To attempt another
definition: the publishing process may be
described as managing the scarcity of good
authors and content to drive profitability”. [Clark,
Gilles & Phillips, Angus (2014), Inside Book
Publishing, Routledge, p. 21].

9. The Information Revolution begins with
Gutenberg
 The printed book as mass information
medium brought about a
 Revolution in knowledge
dissemination, access to information,
scholarly communication, educational
process, information sharing..
 The book as commodity, as
commercial product, information
medium, material – art object


10. Publishing is part of the
information industry
 Publishing is also a creative industry
 The book is considered a unique
object (intangible and tangible).
Even when it is not a material
object, the aesthetics of the book
matter.
 Intellectual capital,
 Economic capital,
 Human capital,
 Symbolic capital,

11. THE PUBLISHING CHAIN AS VALUE
CHAIN. FROM THE AUTHOR TO THE
READER SOURCE: THOMPSON J. B.( 2012) Merchants of
Culture. Publishing business in the Twenty First Century, Polity Press.

12. The publishing chain is a value
chain
Publishing adds value to the text through
 Editing
 Proofreading
 Book design – artistic identity of the book,
whether printed or not
 Promotion
 Marketing
 Distribution
 Advertisement
 Collaborations.
 How new information technologies change
this?

13. The publishing value chain (Clark
& Phillips, Inside Book Publishing,
2008, 67)
 V

14. New information technologies have changed
the publishing activity as a whole:
 Text acquisition
 Publishing services
 Book design
 Book Production
 New publishing models (such as self-publishing)
 Distribution
 Marketing
 Promotion
 Advertisement
 Reading
 Criticism
 Communities or readers
 Libraries - information services

15. Impact of new information
technologies
New information technologies have brought about changes
in:
 The publishing chain,
 The nature of the book,
 Reading experiences.
 Scholarly communication,
 Consumer culture,
 Aesthetic identity of the book,
 Creation,
 User / reader engagement, (dynamic, emerged role of the
reader)
 Social media in building communities of readers (such as
bookblogs)
 Publishing models
 Business models in publishing

16. RE-DEVELOPING PUBLISHING
STRATEGIES
 Inevitably, the
 A. information seeking behaviour,
 B. consumer behaviour,
 C. online communities of readers
 are exploited by the publishing companies in order to
develop content acquisition (list building), promotion,
publicity, marketing and advertisement strategies so as to
widen their reading audience.
 Information as a marketing tool (market knowledge and
feedback from the publisher). Social media marketing

17. The academic publishing value chain
 The impact of technology (online journals, online
publications),
 Publishers,
 Open Access,
 Academic presses,
 Reader engagement / participation stronger than
in other publishing sectors
 Online communities of researchers
 Networks and their influence in the publishing
chain
 “Prestige” publication
 Branding, symbolic capital

18. A different engagement: The reader –
author – editor in the academic
publishing chain
The active role of the reader seems to
have already been active in academic
publishing where the reader may also be
 author,
 peer reviewer,
 editor,
 member of the scientific committee,
 member of the editorial board,
 …
 Recommending also the book to students,
libraries, colleagues, networks…

19. Thus, the reader is among those
who
 Decide,
 Recommend,
 Share risks,
 Create,
 Co-create,
 Intervene, participate
 Reader/user engagement different from
other publishing sectors.
 The role of the reader had already been
upgraded

20. List building in monographs
 Scholarly monographs – decline of sales.
 Greater Selectivity in terms of title acquisition, as
discussed by J. Thompson (2005:126), “may be an
entirely sensible strategy” because
 “not all academic publishers are so sure that there is
a direct and reliable correlation between quality and
commercial viability” (127).
 It is more complex than in other sectors, difficult to
implement in practice (127). “this is partly because
judgements of quality are by nature controversial
and there is often room for disagreement, especially
in the humanities and social sciences”.
 Thompson, J.B. (2005), Publishing in the Digital Age. The Transformation
of Academic and Higher Education Publishing in Britain and the United
States, Cambridge: Polity Press

21. Kind of texts published
 Monographs,
 Journals,
 Textbooks,
 Proceedings,
 Reference works,
 Anthologies
 Books that have trade potential
(“academic-trade” titles )

22. Specialization. Why?
 Both university presses and
commercial publishing companies
published across a wide range of
academic disciplines.
 Disciplinary specialization. Why?

23. Difficulties in the market for monographs?
Going back to the beginnings of the Scientific
Revolution
 Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium caelestium
libri sex, Johannes Petrius, Nuremberg 1543.
 The beginning of the Scientific Revolution is marked by
and begins with the publication of the work of Copernicus.
 “quod mundus sit sphaericus”
Questions that raise include:
 Did that book sell?
 Did that book changed history?
 Which was the audience?
 What does success mean?
 Reduced audiences? Censorship?
 Difficulties in distribution,
 Johannes Kepler said that probably his readers would
read his works in a century time”. He is writing for the
reader of the future

24. Frontlist and backlist
 Backlist – creating fame and
prestige
 New readers for the backlist
 New editions

25. Re-developing the academic
publishing chain
 Re-developing strategies
 Re-considering values
 Re-discovering methods
 Upgraded role of the reader
 Role of technology
 Networking, social media,
 Universities,
 Academic libraries

26. Online academic / research communities.
Networking that offers to researchers:
 Communication,
 Access to scientific publications,
 Discussion,
 Collaboration,
 Participation,
 Sharing content,
 Self-presentation,
Academies go back in time. For
example, in Renaissance

27. Academic networking and publishing
 Chi recognizes that publishers have to expand
their role so as to embrace innovation and
networks of information and mentions (2014:
348) that “only 20% of scholars do not use social
media professionally, while over 40% of scholars
use social media to discover peers, over 45% use
it to post their work, and nearly 50% use it to
follow online discussions” ending to “we as
publishers are beginning to better
understand how users interact with these
platforms, which means we can improve our
products…”.
 Chi, Y.S. (2014), “The E-volution of Publishing: Challenges and
Opportunities in the Digital Age” Publishing Research Quarterly, 30, 344-
351.

28. Added value: what do publishers gain
from online communities – social
media?
 Feedback from readers
 Market knowledge
 Promotion
 Publicity
 Sales, often direct
 An effective tool for marketing
 Discovering new authors and good books
 Interactivity with other stakeholders (authors etc.)
 Sharing risks
 Sharing costs
 Collaborations
 Widening of the reading audience

29. “Uses” of information in the publishing
activity
 From the publisher’s point of view
 From the reader’s point of view

30. Convergence of media and
upgraded roles
 Experimentation in the artistic
identity of the book
 From traditional linear models to
circular models (Thompson 2005:
135)

31. Everything….implies information
 Convergence implies information
 Innovation implies information
 Risk implies information
 Discoverability implies information
 Finally, success implies information

32. Information as challenge and
opportunity
 Among the main challenges that the
publishing industry faces is the
exploitation of new information
technologies and the creation of creative
networks.
 The information networks may lead to
development of the product, to successful
management and marketing, to sales and
success, and to better publishing and
bookselling services.
 The academic publishing value chain
is transformed

33. Publishing in hard times
 Times are always hard for
publishing (R. Calasso, 2015: 13) …
 And innovative,
 And certainly, rewarding

34. Thank you.
Erik Desmazieres, illustration to Jorge Luis Borges’ The Library of
Babel (1997)