Literary Studies

Merchants of Culture: he Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century by John B. Thompson

Item: Merchants of Culture
Author: Terri-ann White

by Terri-ann White •

February 2011, no. 328

Polity, $39.95 hb, 440 pp

Literary Studies

Merchants of Culture: he Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century by John B. Thompson

by Terri-ann White •

February 2011, no. 328

Since well before the global financial crash of 2008, there has been pessimism about the future of the book in an age of new paradigms: electronic transmission and gadgetry, all thus far untested, in a screen culture age. This uncertainty still hovers, like a pungent doom-cloud, despite the furious conversion of new and backlist files into multiple formats in publishing houses everywhere in readiness for the e-revolution. This is expensive and time-consuming work, done in good faith as an investment for the future. One by-product has been a chilling realisation that file archiving is poorly managed by many houses and that finding print-ready files of backlist books to convert to e-format isn’t as easy as was anticipated.

Terri-ann White

Terri-ann White has been published since the late 1980s, taught writing in the community and universities, and previously been an independent bookseller. Her books include a collection of short stories, one novel, three anthologies, and she has been published widely in journals and anthologies. She has an abiding interest in expression and takes great pleasure in collaborative work with other thinkers and artists, especially in the forms of the visual arts and performance. She is currently Director of UWA Publishing.