Educational publishing: ‘graphosphere’, ‘videosphere’ or ‘public sphere’?

Abstract

This article focuses on the current state of the educational book publishing industry within the UK in the aftermath of the 2008 global recession. Following two previous surveys reported in Nixon (1999) and Nixon and Wellington (2005), the article draws on the views of educational publishers to identify current issues and future trends within the educational publishing industry. In the opening section of the article we focus on the book publishing industry generally and argue that, in the recent aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, the industry has to be understood against a continuing history of globalisation, corporatism and digitisation. The central sections of the article provide a brief description of the methods used in eliciting the views of respondents, followed by an overview of some of the key issues that they identified as having a bearing on the field of educational book publishing. Finally, the article discusses the current position of educational publishing with reference to its increasing reliance on highly specialised and professionalised niche markets.

Keywords:

• authorship
• corporatism
• globalisation
• public
• publishing
• readership

Notes

1. Regis Debray, born in 1941, is a leading French intellectual who fought in 1967 with Che Guevara in Bolivia and was official adviser on foreign affairs to President Francois Mitterand from 1981 to 1988 (see Debray, 2007b).

2. Tracking the history of these conglomerates is a complex task. For example, the genealogy of what is now Hachette includes lines leading back to John Murray (founded 1768), Cassell (founded 1840), Ward Lock (founded 1854), Dent (founded 1867), Hodder and Stoughton (founded 1986), Edward Arnold (founded 1890), Weidenfeld and Nicolson (founded 1949): publishing houses that established the UK publishing industry and defined its distinctive quality (see Mitchell, 2010, p. 321).

3. Schiffrin (2000, p. 106) states: ‘It is estimated that in the 1950s London had about two hundred significant publishers. Now there are less than thirty’.

4. As in the case of Allen Lane which is a commercially viable (and therefore, retainable) ‘imprint’ of the equally viable (and therefore, retainable) Penguin ‘brand’ that is owned by Pearson; or Weidenfeld and Nicolson which, through Orion, remains a marketable ‘brand’ under the ownership of Hachette.

5. Jason Epstein was cofounder in 1979 of the Library of America. In 2007 he co-founded On Demand Books. Among his many awards are the Curtis Benjamin Award given by the American Association of Publishers for enriching the world of books.