Suggestions for summer reading list
Kleister, Jill
Hello all,
Anyone involved with ETDs has had to deal with embargos… or more specifically, the concerns students have that an ETD will hamper their ability to get picked up by a commercial publisher. I would like to offer a suggestion for your summer reading list that I found interesting and informative: Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century by John B. Thompson (2010, Polity Press). Some of you may already be familiar with this.
In this book, Thompson is focusing on what he calls “trade” publishing. Obviously this includes fiction and nonfiction best sellers, but he casts his net pretty widely to include all genres. Frankly, it is a bit of a “slog” [tons of data included]; in addition, it was published more than 10 years ago so the information is a bit out of date. Despite these drawbacks, I am glad I took the time to read it. If nothing else, what I learned about the history and role of literary agents was useful.
I was intrigued enough by this book to order two others by the same author for my own summer reading list:
- Books in the Digital Age: The Transformation of Academic and Higher Education Publishing in Britain and the United States (2005)
- Book Wars: The Digital Revolution in Publishing (2021)
Please feel free to share this email with anyone you think might have an interest in this.
Best wishes,
Jill
J. S. Kleister, M.S.
Graduate Reader
Toulouse Graduate School | University of North Texas
Ph: 940.565.2383 | jill.k...@unt.edu | gradschool.unt.edu
