Baverstock, Alison, Richard Bradford and Madelena Gonzalez eds.: Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books
- PDF / 286,827 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 54 Downloads / 165 Views
Baverstock, Alison, Richard Bradford and Madelena Gonzalez eds.: Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books London, New York: Routledge, 2020. 334pp., Hardcover, ISBN: 9780367443153 Kenna MacTavish1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books serves as a welcome reminder that we are living in the third decade of the twenty first century and so too should our understanding of the publishing industry. This edited collection offers a muchneeded update for researchers, students and industry professionals looking to get an overview of the systems and principles within contemporary Anglophone publishing, as well as an introduction to key debates in the crossover space between the publishing industry and the fields of book and publishing studies. Whether you are seeking a one-stop shop to better understand contemporary book reviewing practices, the rise of audiobooks or publishing pedagogy or are interested in further developing your bibliography on travel writing, cookbooks, or diverse children’s book publishing, this collection of essays provides something of note for both entrylevel and seasoned researchers. This collection is indeed comprehensive, but it allows space for its readers to extend and challenge the content into their own locations and publishing contexts. This is one of its key strengths as an all-encompassing edition despite its overwhelming focus on the UK. I was primarily interested in how this collection would deal with its contemporary focus and how each contributor might work to push key debates and definitions forward. As a result of my reading, I have highlighted some contributions below that I think push debates forward in a useful way or offer something to be challenged in their conception of aspects of the contemporary culture of books. Ellie Bowker and Clare Somerville provide a balanced and insightful discussion of the economic, cultural and social challenges that public libraries face in the
* Kenna MacTavish [email protected] 1
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Publishing Research Quarterly
UK. By de-romanticising the library and focussing on it as an institution, Bowker and Somerville paint a realistic landscape of public libraries and the transformation they must undergo. Per Henningsgaard introduces three distinct models for understanding publishing houses in the twenty first century and clearly sets out how these models operate from publisher to consumer. Unlike many of the essays in this collection, Henningsgaard’s overview is not limited to the UK and is therefore accessible and applicable for students, researchers and industry professionals operating across the Anglophone world. While Claire Squires states that her chapter “The Review and the Reviewer” looks to the UK-reviewing environment, her detailed history of the cultural practice and her interrogation of the gendered nature of book reviewing in the contemporary publishing ecosystem is applic
Data Loading...
