The author of the highly accessible and comprehensive Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century (Polity, 2010) returns with an in-depth account of the turbulent decade in which publishing was thrown into disarray by the digital revolution. Thompson relates how the industry was transformed as new opportunities opened up for individuals and organizations while tech giants like Google and Amazon moved in to capitalize in a new publishing environment. More than a study of the faltering rise of e-books, Book Wars explores the ways in which the digital revolution altered traditional publishing as well as self-publishing, audiobooks, bookselling, and the broader ways in which we communicate and share writing, information, and “content.” Read an excerpt from the book’s introduction in our online exclusive.
