“To Reveal the Humble Immigrant Parents to Their Own Children” Immigrant Women, Their American Daughters, and the Hull-House Labor Museum

This essay explores how Jane Addams used her Labor Museum to attempt to connect immigrant adolescents with their parents

How to Sell a Book? Insights from Romania

Many other famous intellectuals, artists and writers stress various positive aspects of reading. Scientific research in medicine and psychology also prove the positive outcomes of reading. Therefore, it is not a surprise that books are highly valued by societies. Nevertheless, book reading seems to be a rarity in some societies. Although reading is beneficial, the book market is not flourishing in many countries, including Romania. The present paper sets a framework for developing marketing strategies that could be used by Romanian publishers to attract more readers. The methodology comprises two parts. A first section is dedicated to the Romanian book market. Investigating its specificity helps us pinpoint the references for successful marketing strategies. The second part is based on the analysis of the scarce literature on marketing in the book industry in order to identify key aspects and vulnerabilities of marketing strategy in this sector

Leidyba didesnių kaimynų šešėlyje: mažų leidyklų skaitmenizacijos galimybės ir iššūkiai Austrijoje ir Škotijoje

Trade publishing houses in small nations operate in a challenging market environment: digitisation and the spread of the internet have lowered the market entry barriers and increased the international competition. This is especially prevalent in English-language markets and increasingly so in the markets with a high English language proficiency amongst second language speakers due to the amount of English content readily available online. Moreover, traditional audiences are eroding, and global players push for multi-platform publishing for a global audience. However, the impact of digitisation on small nation publishers operating in large lan­guage markets lacks scientific exploration. Hence, the impact on small trade publishing houses in Austria and Scotland is explored through qualitative case study research. An overview of the state of the publishing industry in those nations is presented, followed by an analysis of the opportunities and challenges of publishing in an online world where borders are disappearing, thus changing the competitive situation of publishers competing with larger entities in neighbouring nations with the same language. The research found that small nation publishers are benefiting from the possibilities offered by digitisation to reach a wider readership abroad, but at the same time it is becoming increasingly difficult for these pub­lishers and their products to stand out amongst the abundance of content online. Thus, small publishers choose market niches and collaborations to create sustainable business practices. Furthermore, these results provide a basis for further research into e-publishing in other small na­tions. Additional comparative research is needed to better understand the cultural specificities of small book markets and how to best support publishers in and for those nations.Mažose šalyse veikiantys ir komercine veikla užsiimantys leidėjai dirba sudėtingoje rinkoje: skaitmenizacija ir plati interneto prieiga sumažino patekimo į rinką barjerus bei padidino tarptautinę konkurenciją. Tokia padėtis ypač ryški anglakalbėse ir tose leidybos rinkose, kuriose skai­tytojai gana gerai įvaldę anglų kaip antrąją kalbą. Įprastos skaitytojų auditorijos nyksta, o tarptautiniai rinkų dalyviai, taikydamiesi į pasau­linę skaitytojų auditoriją, kuria didesnę prieigą prie daugiaformatės ir daugiaplatformės leidybos. Vis dėlto skaitmenizacijos poveikis mažų šalių leidėjams, veikiantiems didelėse kalbinėse rinkose, kol kas susilau­kė mažai mokslininkų dėmesio. Šiame straipsnyje pasitelkiama kokybinė atvejo analizė ir tiriami mažieji Austrijos ir Škotijos leidėjai. Pristatoma šių šalių leidybos industrijos apžvalga, taip pat pateikiamas tyrimas apie internetinės leidybos teikiamas galimybes ir iššūkius. Straipsnyje daroma išvada, kad mažų šalių leidėjai naudodamiesi skaitmenizacijos teikiamais privalumais pasiekia platesnį užsienio skaitytojų ratą, tačiau tuo pačiu metu patiria ir vis didesnį iššūkį išsiskirti internetinėje erdvėje pasiekiamu turiniu. Mažieji leidėjai renkasi įsitvirtinti rinkos nišose ir pasitelkia bendradarbiavimą kurdami tvarius verslo modelius. Straipsnyje pateikiamos išvados suteikia pagrindą tolesniems skaitmeni­nės leidybos kitose mažose šalyse tyrimams

The Black-Sheep of the Canadian Book Trade: An Exploration of the Current State of Self-Publishing in Canada

The following thesis explores the exclusion of the self-publisher from the publishing sector in Canada. Even though the self-publisher has been a part of the Canadian publishing sector since the 1960s, this type of business model is not acknowledged as a legitimate form of book production. The thesis utilizes mixed methods to create a metanarrative of how the self-publisher is viewed in the publishing industry. The quantitative portion of the thesis employs descriptive statistics in order to summarise the data of how the Canada Book Fund was distributed over a three-year period from 2016-2018. The qualitative portion utilizes a narrative policy analysis of various government documents including the Canada Book Fund guidelines, Creative Canada policy framework, and the guidelines of the different provincial art councils. Through this analysis the study highlights the discourse around self-publishing and how the self-publisher is excluded from the funding models. Furthermore, the reports of the key players of the industry similarly do not acknowledge the self-publisher as a legitimate member of the book trade. The last section investigates what concepts/themes/ideas self-publishers emphasise about the self-publishing industry themselves, which are agency and legitimacy. Through recognizing the discourse linked to the self-publishing infrastructure, the thesis concludes with some suggestion on how to alter this infrastructure in order for the self-publisher to become a legitimate member of the Canadian publishing industry

Managing interactions between technological and stylistic innovation in the media industries, insights from the introduction of ebook technology in the publishing industry

The mainstream of innovation research pays a lot of attention to technological innovation, but has neglected its interaction with another type of innovation, which is particularly important in sectors like the furniture, fashion and the media content industries: stylistic innovation. This paper explains how the quality certification processes for technological and stylistic innovations differ and how they may interact in the media industries. Awards are discussed as specific instantiations of micro certification schemes indicating excellence with respect to stylistic and/or technological product features. Furthermore, a definition of stylistic innovation is developed with reference to organizational identity as well as reputation, two key concepts, which permeate the processes of innovation and certification discussed in this paper. Stylistic and technological innovation may take place in both, the content as well as the form of media products. It will be argued that the interaction between stylistic and technological innovation depends, first of all, on the location of each of these types of innovation within the product, and, secondly, on the characteristics of the certification scheme faced by the producing firms. Within the media sector the literary publishing industry has been chosen to provide the subject of the empirical part. Two case studies related to the introduction of eBook technology are presented: One is a study of the first digital literary publisher in Europe and the other is a case study of the first international eBook award, which mixes technological and stylistic criteria. Theory and cases lead to a number of hypotheses, which are offered as potential departure points for future research on the interaction between innovation in style and technology

'“A strange enough region wherein to wander and muse": Mapping Clerkenwell in Victorian Popular Fictions'

Drawing on the work of Bertrand Westphal, this essay attempts to perform a geocritical reading of the London district of Clerkenwell. After discussing the spatial turn in the Humanities and introducing a range of spatial critical approaches, the essay “maps” literary Clerkenwell from the perspectives of genre hybridity and intertextuality, spatially articulate cartography, multifocal and historically aware public perception and potentially transgressive connection to outside areas. Clerkenwell is seen to have stimulated a range of genre fiction, including Newgate, realist, penny and slum fiction, and social exploration journalism. In much of this writing, the district was defined by its negative associations with crime, poverty, incarceration and slaughter. Such negative imageability, the essay suggests, was self-perpetuating, since authors would be influenced by their reading to create literary worlds repeating existing tropes; these literary representations, in turn, influenced readers’ perceptions of the area.Intertextual, multi-layered and polysensorial geocritical readings,the essay concludes, can producepowerful andnuanced pictures of literary placesbut also face a formidable challenge in defining an adequate geocentric corpus

Digital Publishing in Ghana: A Focus on Children's Ebooks

Adopting a mixed methods approach consisting of interviews, focus group discussions and surveys, this thesis investigates the state of digital publishing in Ghana within the context of Rogers’ diffusion of innovation theory. With a focus on children’s ebooks, it examines publishers’, authors’ and readers’ levels of adoption of ebooks, and their motivations for, perceptions of, and challenges or barriers to, going digital or otherwise. It also assesses the state of digital infrastructure and human resource capacity in Ghana to support the growing ebook sector, and identifies the knowledge and skills deficit in the industry in order to inform the development of courses that will be incorporated into the BA Publishing Studies programme at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). This thesis reveals that the level of adoption of ebook publishing among publishers and authors was relatively low given the interest demonstrated by young readers. The latter were very interested in ebooks and read mainly foreign content because it was freely available and accessible online. Publishers’ and authors’ motivations for publishing ebooks include visibility, the opportunity to reach a much wider audience, and the novelty of publishing digitally to keep abreast of current trends so as to transform the local industry. Some barriers to adoption identified were the cost associated with acquiring infrastructure, the security of online content, inadequate information about ebooks, non-use of ebooks, and infrastructural challenges such as inconsistent electricity supply and poor Internet penetration. The thesis also identified an awareness disconnect between publishers and their local readers: publishers perceive ebooks to be for the international market and, as such, do not focus on promoting them in the local market; thus, local readers are not aware of the existence of ebooks. Expanding on Rogers’ adoption categories, two new categories were created, incidental adopters and perceptual late adopters, to accommodate individuals who do not fall within Rogers’ established adopter categories. To increase the spread of digital publishing and the uptake of ebooks in the Ghanaian book market, the thesis recommends the elimination of the barriers to adoption and, most importantly, advocates training and skills development to reduce the knowledge and skills deficit gap among publishers and authors