Educational publishing: ‘graphosphere’, ‘videosphere’ or ‘public sphere’?

Abstract

This article focuses on the current state of the educational book publishing industry within the UK in the aftermath of the 2008 global recession. Following two previous surveys reported in Nixon (1999) and Nixon and Wellington (2005), the article draws on the views of educational publishers to identify current issues and future trends within the educational publishing industry. In the opening section of the article we focus on the book publishing industry generally and argue that, in the recent aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the industry has to be understood against a continuing history of globalisation, corporatism and digitisation. The central sections of the article provide a brief description of the methods used in eliciting the views of respondents, followed by an overview of some of the key issues that they identified as having a bearing on the field of educational book publishing. Finally, the article discusses the current position of educational publishing with reference to its increasing reliance on highly specialised and professionalised niche markets.