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"The Contemporary Small Press: Making Publishing Visible" is a collection of essays edited by Georgina Colby, Kaja Marczewska, and Leigh Wilson. The book explores the world of small presses in the UK and the US, with a focus on their history, artistry, and impact on the publishing industry. The essays cover a range of topics, including the relationship between small presses and modernist experiments, the publishing history of black poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and the role of small presses in promoting inclusive literature. While the book provides valuable insights into the small press sector, it acknowledges the challenge of comprehensively representing such a diverse and extensive industry. [Extracted from the article]

This is, Smith continues in her introduction, "a book about books, rather than words." "A book becomes a book in the hands of its readers", Smith concludes, after considerable deliberation. The first thing to note about Emma Smith's I Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers i is that like Keats's thing of beauty, this book will be a joy for as long as there are books and people who appreciate them - that is, readers. [Extracted from the article]

This paper investigates consumption patterns in digital subscription-based streaming services for books by means of a large-scale dataset derived from Storytel. The aim is twofold: to empirically discuss how book consumption in the commercial top segment diverges between print books and digital streaming platforms, and to conceptually show the usefulness and considerable possibilities with computational approaches for digital publishing studies and contemporary book history. This is accomplished by introducing the concept of the beststreamer, and the average finishing degree measure. The empirical output shows large differences between print bestsellers and digital beststreamers, both in terms of genre distributions, finished streams, and levels of completion. These results are discussed in relation to factors fostering consumption patterns, such as platform design, pricing models, supply, marketing, customer base, and media-specific features of the audiobook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we attempt to present a historical examination of the relation between authors and the objective manifestations of power throughout the Iranian history. In addition to a historical study, using various techniques of interview with people associated with the publication industry, including authors, publishers, distribution companies, and booksellers, we will investigate the latest conditions of book publishing in Tehran. The results of this study suggest that the crowning points of flourish of books in Iran were the political discontinuities, suspensions of governments, and the revolutionary situations. As the institution of power is reestablished, the conditions for book production are disturbed, whether in terms of form or content. In this study, we have suggested that over time, the historical, social and critical aspect of books is reduced and their mass-market aspect grows. The results of the study also indicate that over time, as the power of the cyber world has increased, the government has lost the power of control and it has become practically impossible to objectively manipulate book production. The books are, on the other hand, controlled by the free market. In other words, controlling books has gone out of the control of the repressive state apparatus, and has been transferred to the hands of the free market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Book Studies is an emerging field, which encompasses Book History and Book Arts. Because of this duality it is not always clear whether it is a free-standing discipline or merely an interdisciplinary academic program. This article attempts to investigates its disciplinary identity through an in-depth analysis of Book Studies' history, discursive field, major stakeholders, and scholarly communications. In addition, the article identifies and explores a few major academic programs in Book Studies in the United States and abroad. Based on the evidence gathered from the syllabi of the academic programs and the scholarly communication of the participants, some of the implications of the article are: the discursive field of Book Studies is developing around two very different centers, Book History and Book Arts; Book Studies’ acquired dual disciplinary identity is not a “birth defect” but rather a goal of including sociocultural, historic and aesthetic aspects of the book. The potential future of Book Studies as a field is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the connection between contemporary book publishing and the world of academia. For many years, publishing was merely the way in which information in the fields of academia was disseminated. It has taken much longer for publishing to become the subject of research. The research surrounding book publishing is often multidisciplinary in nature. Topics covered in the research of book publishing includes industry research and vocational information, personal accounts, the history of books, communication studies and sociology, and nationalist and post-colonial studies.

Focuses on the study of book history. Application of undergraduate book history courses at universities; Impact of book studies on literary scholarship; Effect of print technology on the history of books.