Background:
This reading, written by
John B. Thompson, is a chapter of his book “Merchants of Culture: The
Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century” that published in 2010, well
into the post-web, post-google times.
Author’s information:
“John B. Thompson is Professor of Sociology at
the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He has held
Visiting Professorships at universities in the United States, Canada, Italy,
Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, China and South Africa. His main areas of research are contemporary
social and political theory; sociology of the media and modern culture; the
social organization of the media industries; the social and political impact of
information and communication technologies; and the changing forms of political
communication. Recent publications
include Ideology and Modern Culture (1990), The Media and Modernity (1995),
Political Scandal (2000), Books in the Digital Age (2005) and Merchants of
Culture (2010). He was awarded the
European Amalfi Prize for Sociology and the Social Sciences in 2001 for his
work on political scandal. He is
currently working on the impact of the digital revolution on the book
publishing industry.”
source: University of Cambridge-Sociology-All
Sociology Contacts
“Merchants of Culture”,
where the chapter is picked from, is a book written by John B. Thompson that
published in September, 2010. It’s a great introduction, a meaningful discussion
and an excellent conclusion of the publishing industry that cover the major
changes over the past decades. It’s like Mr. Phil Simon said on GoodReads, “If
you want to understand the history of publishing and why its future is in
doubt, buy this book and read it.” Hence, the book targets on people who are
professional or interested in knowing or researching the history or the future development
of publishing industry field.
There are over hundreds
of reviews about the whole book that can be found in GoodReads, but I didn't find
any materials that are specifically related to the Chapter 9 itself.
The Article:
When
the third technological revolution came at the end of the 20th
Century, not only professionals in publishing industry, but also many
organizations and people of various background had foreseen the huge change
that would happen in the field- but they were too optimistic- the concerns
about the Internet economy made the first digital revolution in the publishing
industry not develop as expected-it almost failed.
With
such mixed feelings between expectation and anxiousness, people could only devote
their hope to more digital devices and the new generation growing up in the
digital era. During the uncertain waiting, the situation finally began to
change since 2006- although the proportion of e-books still weighed so little
in the whole publishing field- there was no doubt that the improvement of
digital revolution become incredible. That should all thank to the broad
utilization of new digital tools. As a result, the future of the publishing
industry turned more confusing.
For
those people who were skeptic for the digitalization, they still didn't believe
that e-books could replace the plenty functions of print-on-paper books. Moreover,
they argued that the digitalization in publishing was totally different from
that in music industry. They insisted that print books had more significance
than simple fast-food entertainment.
In the
chapter 9 of the book “Merchants of Culture”, Prof. Thompson claimed that digital
revolution had already happened under the fake appearance of calm. In addition,
he argued that it was the revolution of process instead of product- that was
so-called the “hidden revolution”. It included four levels of aspects that digitalization
were influencing the publishing industry, which in fact showed that publishing
had previously been impacted by the digital revolution silently. However,
generally, the development of e-books still had four major problems: hardware,
format, rights and price. Based on these four questions, Prof. Thompson
discussed about seven possible technological improvements in the future.
About
the relationship between the technology and publishing, Prof. Thompson used
reference publishing and scientific & scholarly journal publishing as instances
to explain the adaptation processes and methods. What’s more, he spent couple
pages repeatedly emphasizing the necessity of building digital archives systems
for publishing business under the technological environment- it would help to
set up publishers’ own profiles and increase the efficiency of running the
industry.
At the
end of the chapter, Prof. Thompson also mentioned about the severe threat that
the copyright problem was faced with under the digital revolution and he
provided three suggestions. Additionally, for the consideration of the publishing
industry, he analyzed the price crush caused by corporations like Amazon to
traditional publishers and offered some thoughts.
Thompson, J. B. (2010). Merchants of culture: the publishing business in the
twenty-first century. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Retrieved
from:
Book Reviews about “Merchants of Culture” in GoodReads page:
University of Cambridge-Sociology-All Sociology Contacts
page:
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