Book Market Research Articles

Book Marketing in Nigeria: Appraising the Role of Digital and Social Media Innovations

Nigeria’s huge population assures a ready market for books, setting the stage for a virile book publishing industry. However, the book industry has been characterized by some anomalies, including the shortage of tertiary level textbooks and the non-availability of books in professional fields like medicine, engineering and technology. Although the situation has improved considerably over the years, the emergence of digital technologies has set the tone for competition in consumer media markets, with book publishers struggling to gain competitive advantage through digital media adoption. Past studies record various approaches to repositioning the Nigerian book publishing industry for growth and development through the adoption of various forms of digital publishing innovations. However, there is a knowledge gap on the role of social media innovations in the prevailing business-to-consumer (b2c) book market environment in Nigeria. A review of extant literature reveals that the book market in Nigeria has been greatly influenced by the demand for educational materials, especially textbooks for primary and secondary level education. It is established that to expand and grow a virile book publishing industry, Nigerian publishers need to open up new book markets and deploy digital and social media innovations to attract new customers, develop relationships, and increase awareness.

Літературний бренд, який (не) змінює канон: кейс Марії Матіос

Maria Matios belongs to the Ukrainian literary generation of the eighties of the 20th century. The writer has a lot of prose texts, the editions are fantastic for the Ukrainian book market, the affection of the mass reader is undeniable. That is, we are dealing with a literary brand. However, this literary brand, highly sought after by publishers, readers, and translators, and awarded with many awards, did not enter the literary canon. Literary criticism mostly assigns the prose works of Maria Matios a place in the so-called “mass” literature, the writer’s works are not included in the school curriculum. The prose of Maria Mathios is an interweaving of historical and femincentric themes. The historical theme in Matios’s prose is not presented from the angle usual for similar themes. The reader does not see the historical twists and turns that usually take place in the capitals, he observes the consequences of major historical events in the small village of Roztoky in Bukovyna. The village, which for the author herself is not the periphery, but the center, because she was born in it. Just as peripheral to the patriarchal masculine center is the “second sex”, on whose behalf the story is told in the writer’s texts. The women of Maria Mathios talk about their psychological and bodily experiences of survival in times of great social upheaval. The prose texts of Maria Mathios make sense of the colonial traumas of Ukrainian memory, centering the peripheral. The author uses one of the most relevant decolonial narrative strategies – the archival impulse. The writer delegitimizes the story officially broadcast by the former metropolis; emphasizes the history of national resistance. The prose of Maria Mathios is important and necessary for our literary canon.

도서 마케팅 전략을 활용한 독서 수업 모형 연구

This paper proposes a new reading class model that promotes integrated thinking and encourages independent reading. The proposed model enhances learners' creative, critical thinking, reading, and communication skills by developing ideas and sales strategies for book content and promotional materials. It fosters problem awareness, generates creative ideas, and verifies new concepts. By incorporating book marketing strategies, these reading classes stimulate diverse opinions and alleviate traditional class-related prejudices. Survey results among learners confirm the positive impact of this model as a supplementary activity that promotes creative and critical thinking, thereby enhancing the educational value of reading subjects.

Reconstructing Giovanni Vacca’s Collection in the Vatican Library

Abstract This article reconstructs an important but specific portion of Giovanni Vacca’s personal library: his books related to mathematics in Chinese language. Collected during his stay in China from 1907 to 1908, they were donated to the Vatican Library after his death. The article combines detailed archival and bibliographic research with an analysis of handwritten annotations in mathematical books in the Library’s collection R. G. Oriente in order to identify which books were previously owned by Vacca. This not only allows us to contextualize his sojourn in China and understand better his intellectual interests in Chinese science and the way he read and translated Chinese mathematical texts, but it also contributes to a more detailed picture of the Chinese book market in the early twentieth century.

Fugitive Print: Robert Southey and S. T. Coleridge’s Devil-Ballad

The article examines the print history of Robert Southey and S. T. Coleridge’s co-written but anonymously published ‘The Devil’s Thoughts’ (1799). Over more than three decades, the ballad was transcribed, reprinted, and imitated. Most notably, an illustrated edition of 1830—erroneously ascribed to the classical scholar Richard Porson—enjoyed much popularity in the market for print, allegedly selling fifteen-thousand copies. The satirical poem aims its barbs at lucrative but immoral professions (lawyers, apothecaries, and booksellers), but government policies on prisons and support for war with France are also criticised. The article aims to discuss the poetical and political reasons why the two poets were reluctant to acknowledge the authorship of the satire. Examining the ballad’s various reproductions provides an illuminating case study of how nineteenth-century print culture could exploit popular texts that were placed in the public domain. The discussion will be divided into three sections. The first section will examine the poem’s genesis and unpack its most significant allusions in the context of contemporary print satire. The second section will document the reproduction trajectory of a Romantic-period poem that was dispossessed for most of its popular lifespan. The final section will critically examine how entrepreneurs in the book market cashed in on the popularity of the illustrated version (1830) by publishing several derivative compositions in hasty succession.

Warum angebliche Nachdrucke kantischer Schriften rechtmäßige Auflagen sind. Über die Nützlichkeit von Auflagenvergleichen und die historische Bedeutung der Buchmessen

Abstract This paper argues against the assertion that several of Kant’s writings were published in the form of pirate editions. It seeks to establish that most of the the editions in question (printed between 1769 and 1803) were lawfully printed. Presumably, these editions were to be sold exclusively at book fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig; both locations are printed on their title pages, although no information on the publisher is provided. The paper also presents crucial results of detailed comparisons of all contemporary editions of Kant’s writings and delivers a short historical sketch of eighteenth-century copyright law and the philosophical debate on this topic. Finally, the importance of book fairs for trading and selling books at that time is emphasized.

Litterär Kvinnokamp, anno 2014

This article examines the functions of feminism in the critical reception of Kristina Sandberg’s Maj-Trilogy, published 2010-2014. Detailing the evaluative patterns of reviews, it is shown that critics’ increased attention to feminist politics and women’s history in the novels was tied to a de-aestheticizing rhetoric, exemplifying gender hierarchies on the literary field. However, the trilogy’s critical and commercial success is also shown to be based on conception of the women’s cause and feminist writing traditions. Connecting these points, the article argues that a principal function of feminism on the contemporary Swedish book market is to make varying evaluative principles visible, and to bridge the boundaries of cultural, political and social fields.

#forfatterliv #skriveliv

The number and range of writing communities, schools, courses etc. have been on the rise in Denmark in recent years. In both various local and online communities many writers, especially young people, engage with literature detached from or only loosely affiliated with the traditional, established literary institutions and domains. The contemporary publishing landscape’s traditional as well as virtual, online publics and the literary environments on social media compose important contexts that most authors’ practices relate to today. Based on a media ethnographic approach, this article examines the Danish author Sofie Riis Endahl’s use of Instagram in her author practice thus shedding light on the values and understandings of the literary culture that she is engaged in. The analyses point to Endahl’s dual attachment to online social reading and writing communities as well as the established players of the book market and literary institutions. Endahl takes part in a literary culture that is supported by social capital and where a distinctive author ethos is prevalent; it is an ethos that ascribes value to openness, fallibility, persistence and hard work. At the same time this culture relates to and navigates aspirational in relation to an established literary culture in the way that it celebrates cultural capital in the form of reviews in national newspapers, the state’s art foundation, the big publishers and literary awards.

Interpretation, Commercialisation, and Eighteenth-Century Frontispieces: Tobias Smollett

ABSTRACT Tobias Smollett's works were among the most frequently illustrated in the eighteenth century. Smollett's eclectic output encountered equally diverse types of illustration that both accompanied these works and inhabited their own independent creative identity. Frontispieces occupy a unique place within this wider context. This article investigates two main points: first, booksellers deemed Smollett a saleable author, deserving of potentially expensive illustrated additions that enhanced his works' circulation on a competitive book market; second, these illustrations were considered useful visual tools in deciphering the verbal text, with frontispieces serving their own specific introductory function. Two types of publication by Smollett—his translated texts, Gil Blas (1748) and Don Quixote (1755), and original prose fictions, Roderick Random (1748) and Peregrine Pickle (1751)—and their earliest frontispieces (by Francis Hayman, Henry Fuseli, and an anonymous artist) shed new light on Smollett's early reception, and on the wider forms and functions of eighteenth-century frontispieces.

Josef Váchal’s Authorial Intentionality as a Manifestation of Aesthetic Trends in Culture at Turn of 19th—20th Centuries

The question of the formation of a new type of creator-demiurge in the conditions of culture at the turn of the 19th—20th centuries is considered. Particular attention is paid to the personality of the Czech artist Josef Váchal. The relevance of the study is determined by several factors: firstly, the recent increased interest in Czech literature in Russia and, at the same time, its insufficient representation both in the book market and in the scientific community; secondly, the lack of Russian-language criticism directly devoted to the work and the author’s figure of J. Váchal. Describing the cultural and historical environment in which the creative personality of the artist was formed, the authors of the article refer both to the general European context and directly to the Czech language. It has been established that the work of J. Váchal has a deep connection with the history of his country. In particular, the artist’s reaction to certain moods prevailing in Czech society at that time explains his passion for baroque aesthetics, the cornerstone of his poetics. In addition, Váchal’s biography largely determined the themes and form of his works, so understanding him as a specific personality of the 19th-20th centuries contributes to a more detailed analysis of his work.

Famous after death: The effect of a writer's death on book sales

In the market for books we investigate whether the death of an author has an impact on the demand for his/her books, that is, we ask whether consumers are affected by factors such as emotions and limited attention, as highlighted in behavioral economics. We use bestseller lists at a weekly level over 30 years (1975–2005) and, by exploiting the panel nature of our data (at author-week level), we implement an Event Study Design to evaluate the impact of a writer's death on the probability of his/her books entering the bestseller list in the period immediately following his/her death. Controlling for individual and time fixed effects and some individual characteristics, we find that a writer's death increases the probability of his/her being on the bestseller list by more than 100%. As a robustness check, we also use a Regression Discontinuity in Time and obtain very similar results. In an attempt to investigate what mechanisms drive consumers’ decisions, we find a greater impact when writers die at an early age, when they are famous writers or when the news is covered extensively. These findings represent suggestive evidence that emotions and media attention are the main drivers of the impact.

Forging a friction

The article explores the development of e-lending models for digital books (e-books and digital audiobooks) in public libraries from a comparative perspective, analysing cases in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Special attention is placed on the actors involved in developing e-lending models and the variations across Scandinavia. First, the legal prerequisites of digital books, licensing culture and policy context are linked. Next, the phenomenon of e-lending and e-lending models are introduced and discussed as a form of artificial friction. Then, based on a review of international and Scandinavian grey literature, the paper provides three chronological overviews of e-lending model development, seen as an interplay between publishers and public libraries. The comparison highlights the similarities between the three countries but also differences in preference for a particular e-lending model in involvement of policy actors, and in pace and character of the analysed processes. Differences are primarily attributed to variances in established collaboration practices between the identified actors of cultural policy, to already existing regulatory frameworks, and to the maturity of the digital book market.

Self-positioning of the book publishing leaders in Russia

Book publishing is an individual sector of economy, which needs development of successful strategies, also communicational, in the conditions of the ongoing transformation. The aim of the article is to study self-positioning as an element of corporate communication of the leading Russian book publishing groups and publishers. The principal method is content-analysis of the relevant information blocks from the official Internetpages of 15 leaders of the domestic book publishing. The results outline self-positioning with seven components, among which the most frequent are “Production”, “History”, and “Leadership”. Notably, some book publishers emphasize on solution of super-tasks. The companies use chiefly different sets of components, which fact implies individuality of their approaches to self-positioning. The frequency of some components is linked unexpectedly to the monopolization of the domestic book market. Generally, the use of the considered element of corporate communication by the leaders of book publishing in Russia can be judged rather mature, although successful self-positioning may require some additional components.

BUILDING A LOYAL FOLLOWING: A LEGAL PERSPECTIVE ON CONVERTING VIEWERS TO FANS THROUGH INTERACTIVE BOOK STREAMING ON DOUYIN

In this research, the objective is to collect a large amount of live streaming data over a long period of time, to argue the micro problems of live streaming e-commerce environment (live streaming book selling e-commerce) with big data, how to efficiently interact with viewers to convert live streaming traffic into subscribers, to discuss the moderating effect of the number of live interactions between live streaming traffic (viewership) and the number of new subscribers, and to discuss the influence of demographic characteristics (gender, age, geographic regions) of viewers as control variables. This research applied Python data crawling, and took into account 1,664 live streaming events from the top ten book publisher accounts in China from January 1 to June 30, 2022, and 52,788,900 live comments, and conducted a statistical analysis of the data to discuss the research hypotheses. The research results that anchors should cater to the reviewers and interact with them according to their psychological needs in a timely manner. In addition, anchors should appropriately guide interactions at live streaming events, control the pace of the live streaming events, allocate a reasonable amount of time to demonstrate the products, answer to questions raised by viewers and guide them to subscribe their live streaming accounts. The value is an attempt to explain the cause-and-effect in social science with big data, thus to offer experience for live streaming e-commerce companies to improve their marketing performance.

Polish Mother

Polish Mother

Collection Development Policies and Practices: A Survey of Public Libraries in Punjab, Pakistan

The status of collection development in public libraries depicts the poor condition in the following four aspects: books, periodicals, rare material and digital information resources. The library staff mostly used the traditional sources as a tool for collection development i.e. Suggestion box Catalogues, Bibliographies, Book sellers/ publishers lists, Reviews of books and Journals. The existing collection development policies were not comprehensive, did not cover necessary aspects concerning to collection development. The public libraries were facing many obstacles and challenges in proceeding collection development process i.e. shortage of staff, insufficient financial resources, lack of training opportunities for library staff to update their professional skills, non-provision of internet connection and digital equipment to use the latest information communication technology, lack of funds for libraries collection development, Indifferent and neglecting attitude of the higher authorities towards libraries were burning issues and challenges to maintain the international standards of collection development within the public libraries of Punjab, Pakistan.

Political, Cultural, and Social Factors in the Transformations of the Children’s Book Market in Poland on the Example of Nasza Księgarnia Publishing House

Poland’s turbulent history, marked by several changes in the political system, has combined with dynamic economic, social, and cultural factors to profoundly affect the operations of all industries, including the publishing sector. This paper outlines the development of Nasza Księgarnia (literally: Our Bookshop), a publishing house founded in 1921 whose one-century- long history perfectly embodies the profound transformations which the Polish market of children’s and young adults’ books has experienced from the moment Poland regained sovereign statehood in 1918, through the communist period and the political transition of 1989, to the beginning of the new millennium. The argument is theoretically underpinned by the framework proposed by Michael Bhaskar (Bhaskar 2013), and the operations of Nasza Księgarnia are examined in terms of its crucial notions of framing, filtering, and amplification. At the same time, Hans Heino-Ewers’s (Heino-Ewers 2009) model of children’s literary communication is applied to highlight the specific role of Nasza Księgarnia as a publisher for children and young adults. These two theoretical tools offer insight into the ways in which political and social changes affected the evolution of the publishing repertoire and the editorial form of the children’s book in Poland throughout and at the turn of the 20th century.

O czeskim czytelnictwie (Jiří Trávníček, A Nation of Bookworms? The Czechs as Readers: Reading in Time of Civilizational Fatigue, Prague: Karolinum Press, 2021, ss. 212)

Reading is one of the key communicative competences. Unfortunately, according to research conducted by the National Library, Poles read very little. It is completely different in the Czech Republic. The reading culture of our southern neighbors has been well developed and stable for years. In the book A Nation of Bookworms? The Czechs as Readers: Reading in Time of Civilizational Fatigue Jiří Trávníček analyzes the Czech reading culture in detail and in many aspects. Its current state is significantly influenced by the strength of tradition. The considerations presented here have a great advantage - they are conducted from different perspectives and using different methodologies. Trávníček willingly refers to theoretical works as well as uses specific figures on the book market and readership. He consistently warns against all kinds of simplifications and schematisms regarding the diagnosis of reading habits, because, as he rightly notes, there are no simple answers and clear classifications in this topic.

Gribanov Readings — 2022 as a Platform for Discussing the History and Development of Book Culture in Russia

The All-Russian scientific and practical conference with international participation “Gribanov Readings — 2022” was held on December 14—16, 2022 at the National Library of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). The article discusses the problems of the book culture of the regions of Russia; this theme was in the focus of attention of conference participants and was the subject of scientific discussion at the plenary session and in the course of the sections: “National and local history bibliography: history, status and new horizons”, “Reading infrastructure: research, exchange of experience”, “Historical and cultural studies to preserve the cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of the Russian North, Siberia and the Far East” and “Digital transformation of libraries”. Within the framework of the conference, there were organized the round table “Modern Library Education: exchange of opinions of practitioners and theorists, managers and performers, teachers and students, readers and librarians” and the First Regional Festival of Scientific Research Cinema “Science Cinema”. The conference aroused great interest in the professional and scientific community. More than 130 specialists took part in it — theorists and practitioners of library and information activities, experts in the book industry, philosophers, historians, ethnographers, cultural scientists, art historians, employees of archives and museums from 30 regions of Russia, as well as from Belarus, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The conference was aimed at identifying the main vectors of the history and current trends in the development of book culture in the regions of Russia, assessing the role of books and reading, bibliography, modern book publishing, discussing the key issues of the domestic book market, finding ways to digitally transform libraries and preserve the best traditions of the development of the book industry.

Improvement of the Fama-French Five Factors Model in Terms of The US Dollar Index

Contemporarily, the Fama-French Five Factors (FF5) model is a well-known asset pricing model, which establishes a model with five fundamental factors of market in order to explain the return of stocks and has an excellent performance in the market. This paper attempts to improve the FF5 factors asset pricing model by introducing the macroeconomic factor of the exchange rate. Primarily, the monthly circulating market value, monthly book market value ratio, monthly profitability, and monthly total asset growth rate of all U.S. stocks are selected. The method in this paper calculates and processes it and obtains the time series of the FF5 basic factor. Afterwards, we use the monthly variation extent of the US dollar index to represent exchange rate changes to improve the model, select 22 representative stocks from U.S. stocks to test. Subsequently, the advantages and disadvantages of the new model are compared with the FF5 model. According to the analysis, the new model has enhanced the ability to interpret the yield of most stocks and greatly enhanced the ability to interpret the stocks of large international companies. These results shed light on guiding further exploration of asset pricing model.