Possible crisis in Western publishing
There has been some controversy in recent times over what is perceived as a crisis in Western publishing. The general complaint is that conglomerates or large corporations, having bought and merged a significant number of key publishing houses or bookstores, now exercise unprecedented influence over various aspects of publishing, from editorial decisions to the market share of bestsellers; this, claim critics, has led not only to a decline in quality but, among other things, the consolidation of politically conservative opinions, a drastic reduction in competition and in numbers of independent businesses, and a superabundance of transient, non-noteworthy literature.
References
- Schiffrin, André (2000). The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read.
- Epstein, Jason. Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future.
- Ugrešić, Dubravka (2003). Thank You for Not Reading.
External links
- A Report to the Authors Guild which reveals a "Crisis in Midlist Publishing" - Study in PDF (http://www.authorsguild.org/miscfiles/midlist.pdf)
- Book-Busters: Corporate Consolidation in Book Publishing and Selling and the Decline of Diversity by William Petrocelli (1999) (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/Book_busters.html)
- Understanding the Economic Burden of Scholarly Publishing By Cathy N. Davidson (http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i06/06b00701.htm)
- Crisis in Scholarly Publishing: Executive Summary, by Stephen Boyd and Andrew Herkovic (1999) (http://www.stanford.edu/~boyd/schol_pub_crisis.html)
- The Crisis in Scholarly Publishing (http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/crisis.html)
- The Crisis in Scholarly Communication (http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/StatementOnCrisis.htm)
- The Crisis in Scientific Publishing - a resource page (http://www.math.umd.edu/research/crisis.shtml)