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Simone Murray, "From Literature to Content: Media Multinationals, Publishing Practice and the Digitisation of the Book" The vibrancy and dynamism of any literary culture are inseparable from consideration of the production contexts within which such literature is created and disseminated. The consolidation of publishing houses within multinational conglomerates is a phenomenon much commented upon since the recession of the early-1990s. Yet, given that publishing's profit margins remain stubbornly low, the question arises as to what media multinationals hope to gain by owning book publishers. Increasingly, the answer appears to be twofold: multinationals' twin strategy is to own a stake in all information platforms; and to own copyright in content which may be streamed across all such platforms. This corporate strategy--here dubbed "content streaming"--has been remarked upon in media business reporting and in the work of select political economists of global media industries. However, to date it has been analysed less frequently from within the field of book history. Such examination is both overdue and vital, as books lose their centuries-old status as repositories of "high" culture to take on a newer, more integrated, role--as reservoirs of content for potential film or TV adaptation or, conversely, as potential repackagers of content generated in other media. Such a sea-change in attitude towards to the book has momentous implications not only for the present literary culture (that is, what is published now) but also for the construction of literary heritage (specifically, what is deemed worthy of republication). The paper argues that book publishing has been thoroughly recategorised within the general sphere of the media industries, and that book publishers' futures stand to be determined by what they can contribute to the wider commercial aims of parent media corporations. That this scenario represents some threat to the specificity of book culture only reinforces the urgent need for such a debate to take place. Biography: Dr Simone Murray is an Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of English, Media Studies & Art History at The University of Queensland. She has published in the areas of publishing history and book publishing as a contemporary media industry. Her PhD from University College London, Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics in Twentieth-Century Britain (1999), analyses the feminist book publishing boom and its impact on cultural politics. |
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