Fighting “Factory Fiction”: How Marginal Actors Resist the Dominant in UK Book Publishing

Abstract

This study gives insights into how marginal actors are able to resist a logic that has started to characterise a field. Based on the case of how small independent book publishers in the UK fight the increasing commercialisation of trade publishing that has led to the emergence of “factory fiction”, we identify three groups of resistant actors: preservers, who maintain an alternative minority logic, innovators, who purify a minority logic, and reformers, who radicalise a minority logic. We find that non-powerful, marginal actors can radically detach themselves from a dominant logic through causing internal logic shifts in a way that allows them to build a distinct niche for themselves. Our multi-level process model of institutional resistance suggests that resistance is a creative, rather than destructive, process that can lead to the emergence of new alternative norms, which give meaning to actors located at the periphery of a field. We contribute by addressing the issue of power asymmetries within institutional fields, giving insights into how marginal actors can emancipate themselves from dominant logics. Furthermore, our concepts of logic purification and radicalisation challenge the common conceptualisations of a dilution or weakening of minority logics once another logic has started to become dominant.