The book trade and Internet publishing: A British perspective

Convergence

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 76-102

  Weedon, Alexis ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BEDFORDSHIRE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0007197531     PISSN: 13548565     EISSN: 17487382     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/135485659600200107     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Steve Outing, On-line Newspapers (NY: Jupiter Communications, 1995).
2. Hans Schmoller, 'The Paperback Revolution', in Essays in the History of Publishing , ed. Asa Briggs (London: Longman, 1974).
3. P. Hayward and G. Orrock, 'Window of Opportunity: CD-ROMs, The International Music Industry and Early Australian Initiatives', Convergence: The journal of research into new media technologies, 1, no. 1, Spring 1995, p. 75.
4. In 1990 sales were £400 million; by 1994 this had fallen to £25 million. Figures from Robert Rossney, 'Encyclopaedia Britannica Online?', Wired, September 1995, p. 38.
5. 〈http://www. eb. com〉 Britannia Online is a subscription service.
6. See Edward J. Valaukas, 'Britannica On-line: Redefining Encyclopeadia for the Next Century', Database, 18, no. 1 (Feb/Mar 1995). Extract 'the inclusion of all of the text and plus the addition of new facts [essential] graphics from the original, and files and the rich variety of pointers to other Internet resources. No other encyclopedia in print or on CD-ROM comes close to this work, in its ease of use, comprehension and sheer utility. ' 〈http://www. eb. com/help/dbmag. html〉
7. New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (1994), available from KimTec UK. It contains 21 volumes of the Academic American Encyclopedia.
8. OmniMedia is working on software for Video CDs which automatically dials-up and links with the WWW in order to update information and video clips. See Screen Digest, April 1995, p. 85. Publishers are also adding links from their CD-ROMs to their own promotional WWW sites.
9. Nicholas Negroponte's London launch of Being Digital (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995), 6 April 1995.
10. R. Escarpit, Sociology of Literature, 2nd edn. , trans. Earnest Pick (London: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. , 1971).
11. Although in Europe the balance remains in favour of the . edu hosts. This is indicative of the manner in which European businesses, with the support of EU initiatives, are striving to develop the content market in a network dominated by Japanese hardware and American software. Screen Digest's figures for July 1994 showed . com were 24% of all hosts and . edu 26. 5%. By October 1994 the percentages were . com 27% and . edu 25. 2% (April 1995), p. 82.
12. Resistance to the commercialisation of the Internet has given rise to behaviours such as 'spamming' and 'flaming'.
13. Ann Shumelda Okerson and James J. O'Donnell, eds. , The Scholarly Journal at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing (Washington, DC: Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing, 1995). This is a paper publication of the discussion which initially appeared on the VPIEJ-L listserv over the summer of 1994 . The book ends with final e-mail in March 1995 although the debate is still running.
14. The sensitivity of the industry to the security of such transactions, and hence to customer confidence, was apparent when two students from the University of California at Berkeley published Netscape's encryption algorithm, thus making their 'secure' financial service insecure. See Ani Hadjian, 'Hackers Find a Chink in Netscape's Armor', Fortune, 21, 30 October 1995, pp. 12-13.
15. Netscape Communications Corporation USA provide Netscape interface software for WWW browsing, e-mail and other forms of communication over the Internet including secure commercial transactions.
16. Internet World International conference, Wembley, London, organised by Learned Information (Europe) Ltd and co-sponsored by Mecklermedia, 16-18 May 1995.
17. Michael Boswood, 'This House believes the present generation of publishers is doomed', British Computer Society Debate, 8 June 1995.
18. Joost Kist, 'The Publishing House of the Future', Logos , 3 March 1992, pp. 153-158.
19. See, for example, Jay David Bolter, Writing Spaces: the computer, hypertext, and the history of writing (Hillsdale, N. J. : Lawrence Erlbaum, 1990).
20. OBS 〈http://marketplace. com/obs/top. htm〉
21. James Frazer and the Diplomia Unit 11, Evolutionary Architecture , see Ellipsis web site.
22. See also James Tatam, 'Learning to drive on the Information Superhighway', The Bookseller, 24 March 1995, p. 33.
23. Noriyuki Tajima and Keith Collie, Tokyo a guide to recent architecture.
24. Neil Spiller, An examination of the role of architecture in the coming era of virtual reality cyberspace and nano-technology, see Ellipsis web site.
25. Michael Boswood of Elsevier, op cit.
26. Simon Murison-Bowie, Oxford University Press, interviewed June 1995.
27. Hot-wired has a turnover c$2m pa according to Robin Hunt, associate editor of Wired, Internet World Publishing conference, June 1995.
28. 〈http://www. pathfinder. com〉 Time Warner's site links to Time Warner Interactive and Time Warner Electronic Publishing, i. e the publishing divisions of the group.
29. Dillions' Cyber. st@tion in Gower Street 〈http://pisces. dillions. co. uk〉 and John Smith & Son, 57 St Vincent Street, Glasgow 〈http://www. johnsmith. co. uk〉. As well as Netscape's secure browser, Dillons' e-mail form offers the added security of sending your order in two halves and splitting your visa card number. Alternatively they will invoice the customer.
30. Philip Blenkinsop, 'Why JR Hartley should try WH Smith', The Independent 2, 28 November 1994 , p. 21.
31. Via a joint European Union/International Electronic Publishing Research Centre study to analyse the opportunities for publishers. Pilot projects have examined the feasibility of Individualised Electronic Newspapers (IEN) and document distribution (DIDOS).
32. 25 European publishing companies contributed to STOP. Jurgen Schmidt et al. , 'Stimulation of publishers. The new media learning material business: entry options for educational and training publishers', in Brian and Margot Blunden, The Electronic Publishing Business and its Market (Leatherhead: PIRA, 1995), p. 274.
33. Examples of group enterprises include TULIP in the USA and the current Superjournal project in Britain.
34. http://www. oup. co. uk/oup/smj/journals/ed/titles/nar/
35. http://hermes. chaphall. co. uk/jms. html
36. Blackwell's Uncover is at 〈uncover@blackwell. co. uk〉
37. Gregory J. E. Rawlins, 'The New Publishing: Technology's Impact on the Publishing Industry over the Next Decade', The Public Access Computer Systems Review 3, no. 8 (1992), pp. 5-63. Available from LISTSERV@UHUPVM1. UH. EDU Mail two messages for the full text GET RAWLINS1 PRV3N8 F=MAIL and GET RAWLINS2 PRV3N8 F=MAIL
38. Internet World International conference, op cit.
39. With the rise of 'publishing agencies' or publishers who are attached to or part of advertising agencies.
40. Charles Tongue, 'BookTrack - How EDI will edify', The Bookseller, 2 June 1995, pp. 18-20.
41. For instance, Internet bookstore, Online bookstore, Sapphire.
42. Michael Porter, Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance (New York: The Free Press, 1985), p. 131.
43. 'For the rest of the summer, bookstores can still participate in Penguin's special anniversary display program and receive a $50 allowance for doing so. Stores that order 50 assorted Penguin backlist titles will receive a display kit, and those who create displays will receive the $50 display allowance. The kit includes a free-standing cut-out Penguin, a Penguin Fiction triangular display card, Penguin Fiction bookmarks, a list of prize-winning Penguin books, and commemorative items - poster, window decal, and note pads. ' From the Penguin USA WWW page, July 1995.
44. 〈http://sunsite. unc. edu/ibic〉 edited and published by Frederick Zimmerman.
45. 〈Booknews@columbia. ilc. com〉 and 〈book-talk@columbia. ilc. com〉 are both owned by Paul Raulerson.
46. http://www. penguin. co. uk
47. They exploited the potential of an Internet site for promotional purposes drawing attention to their heterogenous list of CD-ROMs. (Their titles range from 'RocknRom' database of pop music facts and interactive versions of Beatrix Potter's The Adventures of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny
48. to a CD-ROM of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible
49. and Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, complete with video clips and hitherto unseen photographs 〈http://www. penguin. co. uk〉)
50. See 'Bytes, Penguin opens a new chapter', The Times, Interface, 15 November 1995, p. 2.
51. Macmillan's Information SuperLibrary is at 〈http://www. mcp. com/〉
52. For instance, the print-based firm Reed Books of Australia market electronic products through direct mail/catalogue and the Internet.
53. Brian Blunden, 'Introduction and EP business overview', in Brian and Margot Blunden (1995), p. 34.
54. See Richard Seltzer, 'Reinventing publishing in a global electronic mall', in Brian and Margot Blunden (1995), pp. 531ff.
55. Authors may be the first to use the Net to stimulate interest. Peter Hill, an author, has posted a 'taster' of his new murder mystery novel on his web site, the (fictional) Museum of Contemporary Ideas 〈http://toolshed. artschool. utas. edu. au. moci/home. html〉. Instead of going to literary agents or publishers he has invited them to come to him and intends to auction the international book and film rights in Los Angeles and London on 16 April 1996.
56. See also Tony Dawe, 'Artist has a novel approach to murder,' The Times, Interface, 7 February 1996, p. 9.
57. In his talk at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts conference Seduced and Abandoned: The Body in the Virtual World, 12-13 March 1994.
58. Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown: law and disorder on the electronic frontier (London: Viking, 1993).
59. Karen Fuhrman, On-line Bookstore web page, 10 December 1994, 〈http://marketplace. com/obs/top. htm〉
60. Lisa Buckingham, 'Book sales soar but profits fall', The Guardian, 2 November 1995.