The Hidden Continents of Publishing

Abstract

ook Wars completes British sociologist John B. Thompson’s trilogy on book publishing, which began with Books in the Digital Age (2005) and continued with Merchants of Culture (2010).1 The first title was an expansive survey of academic publishing in the 1990s; the second, a compelling account of the social structure of AngloAmerican trade publishing. Book Wars brings the analysis of trade publishing up to the present, focusing on the impact of digitization. Thompson combines a Bourdieusian analysis of fields with case studies of publishingindustry participants based largely on interviews. His work links the sociology of culture and that of organizations. Literary scholars will see Book Wars as primarily a contribution to book and media history, but any scholar of contemporary literature should pay heed to this long but highly readable guide to the industrial and social conditions of publishing today. Thompson makes a convincing case for his basic but fundamental claim: the impact of digitization on publishing has been deeply uneven. Print forms have not been swept aside by new digital ones. Instead, both the print book and established large publishing firms persist, even as digitization has introduced new