̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - John Thompson

When is a book not a book?

amb206 — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 14:00:46 +0000

In his book Merchants of Culture, Professor John Thompson recounts a conversation with the head of media asset development at a large US publishing house. ̽��ֱ��topic is the impact and future of digital publishing.

His interviewee, anonymised as Steve, has come from the music industry, where he has seen the digital revolution disrupting traditional models. Tasked with shaping the future of a leading publishing house, Steve is struggling to convince his colleagues to think differently about books and to embrace the digital revolution. He says: “A book is not a book. Books are categories. Books are types. Books are different styles of things.”

Thompson is interested in the changing structure of the book publishing industry as the digital revolution transforms the processes and products of the publishing business in ways that are both visible and invisible to the consumer. ̽��ֱ��outcome of his present research will be a book that is due to be published in 2017, in which he will describe the volatile, contested environment responsible for delivering texts to millions of readers in an ever-increasing range of formats.

At the heart of Thompson’s conversation with Steve is a discussion about the thousands of files that are the publisher’s most valuable assets – literally its lifeblood. Having digitised its backlist of top sellers, the company holds an archive of 40,000 titles, a figure that is constantly expanding. How these files are archived, managed and protected so they can be delivered to readers in the most suitable formats is vital to the continuing health of the publishing house. ̽��ֱ��archiving process has been far from simple, requiring the retrieval of files from printers and opening up heated debates about copyright. And the sheer flexibility offered by digitisation introduces new challenges.

Steve explains that, while paper books are relatively simple to deliver (“you’re delivering tree”), the delivery of digital goods is much more complicated. “ ̽��ֱ��thing that people always hoped was the digital world would get simpler and it’s actually a whole lot more complicated because your end result isn’t the same. ̽��ֱ��end result is a database, the end result is a PDF, it’s an image-based PDF, it’s an XML file, it’s an ad-based, Google-search-engine toolset – we’re going to have many more properties digitally than we possibly could have physically. We have seven physical properties [for our books]… and online we have hundreds of formats and types and styles.”

Few of these challenges were foreseen in the feverish hype of the 1990s that the days of the book were numbered. Paper texts were clunky and old fashioned; digital versions were smart and sleek.

Many new start-ups were launched, seeking to create new forms of the book that exploited the multimedia potential of new technologies. But, despite the hype, sales of e-books remained sluggish and many start-ups failed.

E-books finally began to take off in autumn 2007 when Amazon launched the Kindle, which allowed readers to download books and other content directly onto their devices. Sales of e-books soared: in 2010 one large publisher saw its e-book sales rise from 12% to 26% of its revenue over Christmas week.

Industry pundits had predicted that e-book sales would be driven by business books and by businessmen, but it didn’t work out like that – far from it. “ ̽��ֱ��real areas of growth were commercial fiction and genre fiction – categories like sci-fi, mysteries and crime, romances and thrillers,” says Thompson. “This was a revolution being driven largely by women reading commercial and genre fiction on their Kindles.”

Much has happened since Thompson’s interview with Steve took place in New York, but Thompson has maintained the many publishing contacts who give him first-hand access to the latest industry developments. He is now mid-way through an ambitious project to revisit publishers on both sides of the Atlantic in order to discover “what is happening while it’s happening” in an industry that suddenly finds itself at the centre of a major disruptive transformation.

From 2008 to 2012, e-books grew from less than 1% of total US trade sales to over 20%; this was phenomenal growth in an industry where overall sales remain largely static. Many people working in the industry worried that publishing would go the same way as the music industry. But then something dramatic happened: the growth slowed and levelled off at around 22%, forming a classic S-curve. “When you dig beneath the surface, however, you see that the simple S-curve is misleading because it conceals a great deal of variation between different kinds of books. In the case of romance fiction, the growth begins to level off at around 60%, whereas many categories of nonfiction plateau at between 15% and 25%,” says Thompson.

“By looking at what is happening inside the industry, we can see that some of the fears about the future of the publishing industry were misplaced. Many observers thought that developments in book publishing would follow those in the music sector but that hasn’t happened. There isn’t a single model that describes the impact of the digital revolution on the creative industries – there are multiple models, and the impact varies from industry to industry and sector to sector.”

While no one can be sure how the pattern of e-book sales will develop in the future, the digital revolution has already had an enormous impact on the way the publishing industry works. In what Thompson calls “the hidden revolution”, the processes involved in taking a text through the supply chain, from author to reader, have been thoroughly transformed. Print-on-demand means that a book never goes out of print, and with the advent of self-publishing anyone can publish.

“This means that the numbers of books being published, and the number available, have risen dramatically. But how do readers get to know about what’s out there? New platforms have emerged to supplement the traditional model of the newspaper review,” he says.

̽��ֱ��rise of Amazon has played a major part in these developments. “Amazon is part and parcel of the digital revolution. ̽��ֱ��company started in a garage as a classic internet start-up and its ascendancy took everyone by surprise,” says Thompson. Publishers have benefited from Amazon’s growth but they now find themselves locked in a power struggle with the retail giant, who controls around 67% of all e-book sales in the USA and over 40% of all new book unit sales, print and digital.

Relations have become increasingly fraught, he says. Publishers have tried to retain control of pricing by selling e-books on an ‘agency model’, which allows them to fix the price, while Amazon has used its growing market share to try to extract better terms of trade from publishers. ̽��ֱ��struggle ebbs and flows and at times becomes vicious, as it did during the 2014 standoff between Amazon and Hachette (one of the Big Five US trade publishers).

Thompson is determined to get to grips with the fine detail of what goes on behind the scenes in the day-to-day publishing processes. “Fifteen years ago I knew little about trade publishing, but we can only understand how this industry works and how it’s changing by immersing ourselves in it and looking carefully at what happens when new technologies collide with the old world of the book.”

̽��ֱ��e-book has made continued inroads into the publishing world but the printed book has defied predictions of its death. Research by Professor John Thompson focuses on the challenges facing the publishing industry as it embraces the opportunities afforded by the digital revolution.

By looking at what is happening inside the industry, we can see that some of the fears about the future of the publishing industry were misplaced.

Professor John Thompson

̽��ֱ��District

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Talkin' 'bout a revolution: how to make the digital world work for us

Anonymous — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 13:45:18 +0000

New information and communication technologies are having a profound impact on many aspects of social, political and economic life, raising important new issues of social and public policy. Surveillance, privacy, data protection, advanced robotics and artificial intelligence are only a few of the many fundamental issues that are now forcing themselves onto the public agenda in many countries around the world.

There have been other great technological revolutions in the past but the digital revolution is unprecedented in its speed, scope and pervasiveness. Today, less than a decade after smartphones were first introduced, around half the adult population in the world owns one – and by 2020, according to some estimates, 80% will.

Smartphones are, of course, much more than phones: they are powerful computers that we carry around in our pockets and handbags and that give us permanent mobile connectivity. While they enable us to do an enormous range of things, from checking and sending emails to ordering a taxi, using a map and paying for a purchase, they also know a lot about us – who we are, where we are, which websites we visit, what transactions we’ve made, whom we’re communicating with, and so on. They are great enablers but also powerful generators of data about us, some of which may be very personal. Do we know who has access to this data? Do we know what they do with it? Do we care?

̽��ֱ��rapid rise and global spread of the smartphone is just one manifestation of a technological revolution that is a defining feature of our time. No one in the world today is beyond its reach: the everyday act of making a phone call or using a credit card immediately inserts you into complex global networks of digital communication and information flow.

In fact the digital revolution is often misunderstood because it is equated with the internet and yet is much more than this. It involves several interconnected developments: the pervasive digital codification of information; the dramatic expansion of computing power; the integration of information technologies with communication systems; and digital automation or robotics.

Taken together, these developments are spurring profound changes in all spheres of life, from industry and finance to politics, from the nature of public debate to the character of personal relationships, disrupting established institutions and practices, opening up new opportunities and creating new risks.

In Cambridge, an ambitious new interdisciplinary collaboration around ‘digital society’ is being forged to bring together social scientists and computer scientists to tackle some of the big questions raised by the digital revolution.

̽��ֱ��key idea underlying the collaboration is that some of the most important intellectual challenges in this emerging area require both a firm grasp of technology and a deep understanding of processes that are fundamentally social and political in character.

Cambridge is uniquely well-placed to tackle these challenges. As a world-leading university in computer science and technology, the ̽��ֱ�� has been at the forefront of some of the most important developments in this field. Cambridge is also a leading research and development centre for the IT industry. Several significant technology companies are based here, including Microsoft Research, ARM and a sizable number of smaller companies and start-ups. There is also a large group of scholars and researchers in Cambridge in the social sciences and law who are working on aspects of the digital revolution.

By bringing together social scientists and computer scientists on specific research projects, we are forging a new form of interdisciplinary collaboration that will enable us to grapple with some of the big challenges posed by the digital revolution (see panel).

These endeavours dovetail well with research initiatives that are already under way in Cambridge, including the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre and the ̽��ֱ��’s Strategic Research Initiatives and Networks on Big Data, Public Policy, Public Health and Digital Humanities. Cambridge is also a key partner in the UK’s national centre for data science, the Alan Turing Institute, and in the Horizon Digital Economy programme, which aims to tackle the challenge of harnessing the power of ubiquitous computing in a way that is acceptable to society.

While the collaborative work carried out in Cambridge is primarily research-oriented, it is also likely to have significant practical implications. Cambridge has a strong track record in producing world-leading research that feeds directly into real-world applications. As examples, software systems Docker and the Xen hypervisor developed in the Computer Laboratory now run much of the public cloud computing infrastructure, and Raspberry Pi is widely used in technology education in schools.

We are living through a time of enormous social, political and technological change. On the one hand, the digital revolution is enabling massive new powers to be exercised by states and corporations in ways that were largely unforeseen. And, on the other, it is giving rise to new forms of mobilisation and disruption from below by a variety of actors who have found new ways to organise and express themselves in an increasingly networked world. While these and other developments are occurring, the traditional institutions of democratic governance find themselves ill-equipped to understand and keep pace with the new social and technological landscapes that are rapidly emerging around them.

There is no better moment, in our view, to bring together social scientists and computer scientists to tackle the big questions raised by one of the most profound and far-reaching revolutions of our time.

Jon Crowcroft is the Marconi Professor of Communications Systems at Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory and Professor John Thompson is at the Department of Sociology.

̽��ֱ��digital revolution is one of the great social transformations of our time. How can we make the most of it, and also minimise and manage its risks? Jon Crowcroft and John Thompson discuss the challenges as we commence a month-long focus on ‘digital society’.

There is no better moment to bring together social scientists and computer scientists to tackle the big questions raised by one of the most profound and far-reaching revolutions of our time

Jon Crowcroft and John Thompson

Eric Fischer

World travel and communications recorded on Twitter

Key challenges for digital society

What are the consequences of permanent connectivity for the ways that individuals organise their day-to-day lives, interact with others, form social relationships and maintain them over time?
What implications do these transformations have for traditional forms of political organisation and communication? Are they fuelling alternative forms of social and political mobilisation, facilitating grass-root movements and eroding trust in established political institutions and leaders?
What are the implications for privacy of the increasing capacity for surveillance afforded by global networks of communication and information flow? Do individuals in different parts of the world value privacy in the same way, or is this a distinctively Western preoccupation?
How is censorship exercised on the internet? What forms does it assume and what kinds of material are censored? How do censorship practices vary from one country to another? To what extent are individuals aware of censorship and how do they cope with it?
Just as the internet creates new opportunities for states and other organisations to exercise surveillance and censorship, so too it enables individuals and other organisations to disclose information that was previously hidden from view and to hold governments and corporations to account: who are the digital whistleblowers, how effective are they and what are the consequences of the new forms of transparency and accountability that they, among others, are developing?
What techniques do criminals use to deceive users online, how widespread are their activities and what can users do to avoid getting caught in their traps?
What impact is the digital revolution – including developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning – having on traditional industries and forms of employment, and what impact is it likely to have in the coming years? Will it usher in a new era of mass unemployment in which professional occupations as well as manual jobs are displaced by automation, as some fear?
What are the implications of the pervasive digitisation of intellectual content for our traditional ways of thinking about intellectual property and our traditional legal mechanisms for regulating intellectual property rights?
How widespread are new forms of currency that exist only online – so-called cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin – and what impact are they likely to have on traditional financial practices and institutions?
How are new forms of data analysis and advanced robotics affecting the practice of medicine, the provision of healthcare and the detection and control of disease, and how might they affect them in the future?

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Cambridge academics head for Hay

bjb42 — Thu, 31 May 2012 15:00:16 +0000

A series of talks and debates by Cambridge academics on pressing contemporary issues kicks off this week at the Hay Festival.

This year is the 25^th anniversary of the Festival and the fourth year running that the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge has run a series of talks there as part of its commitment to public engagement.

This year's line-up includes Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, who will be participating in three of the 10 sessions on in the Classics series on Herodotus, the “Father of History”, on Plato and on the aspirations and concepts of civilisation, democracy, drama, virtue, victory, liberty and xenia and what the study of Classics has meant in the wider world.

For the first time, Cambridge academics will take part in a series of debates about contemporary political and social issues, including Europe, democracy and urban violence. Among those taking part in the Europe debate is Professor Robert Tombs who has written a blog on the implications for France and Europe of the election of Francois Hollande as president of France.

Another debate covers the broader cultural implications of current events, with Professor Adrian Poole, Professor Alison Sinclair and Jennifer Wallace discussing the modern meaning of tragedy and literary representation of current events. Other speakers include Professor Susan Golombok on alternative family structures, Professor Martin Jones on the archaeology of food, Carolin Crawford on the birth and death of stars, Dame Patricia Hodgson on media regulation in the shadow of the Leveson Inquiry, Professor David Spiegelhalter on our risk society and Professor Stefan Collini on what universities are for.

Professor Lawrence Sherman will talk about how science is transforming policing in a session entitled “ ̽��ֱ��new police knowledge”. ̽��ֱ��session will be introduced by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Denis O’Connor.

Brendan Burchell, senior lecturer in the Sociology Department, will be in conversation with Julia Hobsbawm, honorary visiting professor in networking at Cass Business School, about the future of work.

Other Cambridge academics speaking at Hay are Professor John Thompson, Professor Robert Macfarlane, Professor Martin Rees, Professor John Barrow, Dr Julian Allwood and Professor David MacKay.

Nicola Buckley, head of public engagement at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Cambridge series is a wonderful way to get the fascinating research being done at the ̽��ֱ�� out to the public. ̽��ֱ��Hay Festival draws an international cross-section of people, from policy makers to prospective university students. It is a fantastic platform for our research and this year’s debates aim to highlight the broad range of what we do at the ̽��ֱ�� and its relevance to the key issues we face today.”

Peter Florence, director of the Hay Festival, said: “What’s thrilling about this year’s series is how exacting it is about society. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge experts cut through the political and media spin on big issues and look at them with real attention and intellectual rigour - from policing to European integration and 21st century family structure and risk. It’s a timely reminder about the value of authority; an aspiration that ‘policy’ might be formed by the best ideas and analysis rather than doctrinaire inclination or what’s easiest to sell. What else would you want from the world’s greatest ̽��ֱ�� but the best thinking on subjects that matter?”

Cambridge is fielding a series of talks and debates by leading academics on a range of global challenges at this year's Hay literary Festival.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge experts cut through the political and media spin on big issues and look at them with real attention and intellectual rigour.

Peter Florence

Hay Festival.

̽��ֱ��main site at the Hay Festival.

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̽��ֱ��future of books

bjb42 — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

For centuries, books have played a central role in education, the spread of knowledge and the cultivation of literary and scholarly debate. With its origins dating back to the 15th century, the publishing of books is the oldest of the media industries and one which has continued to flourish despite the profusion of other media forms. However, over the last 30–40 years, the industry has gone through a process of turbulent change stemming from forces that are partly commercial, partly technological. Thanks to these developments, it bears little resemblance today to the industry that existed in the 1960s and before.

Despite these changes and despite the continuing importance of books in contemporary culture, there has been very little systematic research on the modern book publishing industry. Historians have studied the book trade and the impact of books in earlier centuries, but the modern publishing business has been largely neglected by researchers.

It was partly to fill this gap in our knowledge that I began in 1999 to study the changing structure of the industry in Britain and the United States. ̽��ֱ��research, spanning a decade, was funded by two grants from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). While the first phase of the research focused on academic publishing, the second phase, begun in 2005, was concerned with mainstream trade publishing – the world of general interest books, aimed at the wider public and sold through high-street bookstores, supermarkets and the internet. This is the sector of publishing that produces bestsellers like Dan Brown’s ̽��ֱ��Da Vinci Code– books that are widely reviewed in the press, prominently displayed in bookstores and, in some cases, turned into films.

What makes a bestseller? Why do some books take off and become runaway successes while thousands of others vanish without a trace? What are the changes that have swept through the industry and how have they affected the nature of what gets published and what succeeds? What impact have these changes had on the character of our literary culture, and what impact are they likely to have in the years to come?

Three key developments

To address these and other questions I immersed myself in the world of trade publishing in Britain and the USA. I interviewed senior managers, editors and other staff at all of the large trade publishing groups in London and New York, as well as many staff working in small and medium-sized publishing houses; I also interviewed agents, authors, scouts and booksellers – altogether, I did more than 250 interviews with key players in the industry. This enabled me to build up a detailed picture of how the industry works, how it has changed over the past few decades and how it is changing today.

I was able to show that three key developments have shaped the evolution of trade publishing in the English-speaking world since the 1960s. ̽��ֱ��first was the growth of the retail chains, like Waterstones in the UK and Barnes & Noble in the USA. These nationwide chains of book superstores transformed the landscape of bookselling in the 1980s and 1990s; they made books much more widely available, but at the same time they drove many smaller independent booksellers out of business.

̽��ֱ��second development was the rise of the literary agent. Although not new – the first agents appeared in London at the end of the 19th century – literary agents have, since the 1970s, become much more powerful brokers in the field of trade publishing. They control access to new content and, through auctions, are able to raise the stakes for books that are perceived to have high sales potential.

̽��ֱ��final development was the consolidation of publishing houses under the umbrella of large multimedia corporations. Many of the great publishing houses whose names are well known to us all – Penguin, Jonathan Cape, Macmillan, Knopf – are today owned by large corporations and survive as imprints rather than as independent publishing houses.

Making bestsellers

Together, these developments have created a field of cultural activity that has a distinctive structure and dynamic – a ‘logic of the field’. They have led, for instance, to the polarisation of the industry, with four or five large corporate groups dominating the field and a plurality of small independent publishers on the margins. Very few medium-sized independent publishers remain active: in this new world of trade publishing, it is very difficult to be medium-sized.

These developments have also led to a preoccupation with what in the industry are commonly known as ‘big books’. These are not yet bestsellers but rather ‘hoped-for bestsellers’. Given the unavoidable role played by serendipity in trade publishing, it is simply unclear how well many new books will do in the marketplace – no-one really knows.

So how do publishers decide how much they’re willing to pay for them? Various factors come into play here, but a crucial role is played by ‘the web of collective belief’ which is built up through the numerous conversations that take place between agents, editors and other players in the field. In the absence of anything solid, the expressed enthusiasm (or lack of it) of trusted others is decisive.

̽��ֱ��focus on big books is exacerbated by the financial pressures on the publishing houses owned by large corporations and by the practices of the retail chains, which order large quantities of some new books, charge publishers a premium for front-of-store displays and expect them to turn over quickly. Many new books fail to take off and are sent back to publishers in large numbers, resulting in historically high levels of returns. But in those cases where they do take off, publishers and booksellers mobilise quickly behind them, with additional resources and promotion, pouring more fuel on the flames – this in part is how bestsellers are made.

̽��ֱ��end of the book?

Today trade publishers are faced with unprecedented challenges. ̽��ֱ��economic climate is tough, overall sales (especially in North America) are down and the arrival of a new generation of ebook readers has raised fresh questions about the future of printed books. Do these developments mean that the world of the book as we’ve known it is about to undergo a further transformation, even more radical than that which has characterised the industry in recent decades, perhaps even leading to the eclipse of the printed book as such?

Despite widespread speculation about the ‘end of the book’, we are still a long way from a world in which trade books are routinely read on screens rather than on the printed page. Although ebook sales have increased significantly in recent years, especially in the USA, they still account for only around 1% of the revenues of trade publishers – a tiny fraction. This is bound to increase as reading devices become more widely available but no-one knows exactly how significant it will eventually become.

Whatever happens, it seems likely that books will continue to play an important role in our cultural and public life for the foreseeable future. Books have been, and remain for many, a privileged form of communication, one in which the genius of the written word can be inscribed in an object that is at once a medium of expression, a means of communication and a form of art. For the telling of extended stories or the sustained interrogation of our ways of thinking and acting, the book has proven to be a most satisfying and resilient cultural form, and it is not likely to disappear soon. But how books will be produced and delivered, and where they will fit in the new symbolic and information environments that are emerging today, are questions to which there are, at present, no clear answers.

For more information, please contact the author Professor John Thompson (jbt1000@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of Sociology.

̽��ֱ��book publishing industry has gone through more change during the past few decades than in any comparable period in its 500-year history. Professor John Thompson examines this change and asks what impact it will have on the future of books.

Despite widespread speculation about the ‘end of the book’, we are still a long way from a world in which trade books are routinely read on screens rather than on the printed page.

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Browsing for books at ̽��ֱ��Strand

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