Inventing Publishing for the 21st Century

So I attended the knowledge mobilization symposium in Banff and came away with the following impressions.

Canada's research funding council, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) sees that it is facing an issue. SSHRC spends in the neighbourhood of $100 million each year funding research. It has the perception that the results of the research it funds do not circulate in society as a whole as much as they should. Given that there is increasing pressure on the scholarly community to show relevance to society, SSHRC wonders how the results of social science and humanities research might get better known and might therefore more greatly benefit society.

Problem 1: How to make research results more accessible.
A beginning answer here is to make all research results publicly available by funding a project to take all Canadian social science and humanities journals online. The project is called Synergies. It is a collaboration among five universities to set up the hardware, software and service infrastructure to operate the back end of the database. The Synergies group went forward to the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) for funding but was refused because it was not deemed an eligible project. Since that time, CFI has been scratching its head on what to do with Synergies and has given the project some funds to apply again. This is a good thing since its record on funding social science and humanities projects is abysmal.

Online availablility to all journal-accepted and -published peer reviewed articles would be a good thing. But it demands a second complementary initiative. Right now, current issues of journals can only be accessed by subscribers. Because university libraries subscribe, scholars and students of most universities can gain access to the literature. However, the general public cannot. Equally importantly, government departments in charge of developing policy seldom have access to even the most relevant literature for development of policy and programs. Stunning! (Such are the blessings of small government.) So online publishing needs to be accompanied by a second policy: Free Public Access. For $7 million, not $7 billion or even $700 or $70 million, but a mere $7 million all Canadian social science and humanities jhournals could be made public available to all scholars, students, governments, organizations, businesses and members of the public. Already SSHRC provides $2 million in support.

Problem 2
How much of all this research is actually of any value to anyone?
Is anyone really interested in the choices people make and hence the patterns that show up in vanity licence plates? I guess that might be good for a passing comment. Lots of scholarly journal articles are, well, esoteric, and while they do add something to the sum total of human knowledge, a fair percentage of what they add is a bit trivial. So there is a lurking problem, or at least issue, behind knowledge mobilization. If the aim is create knowledege that is relevant to social needs, then perhaps it would be a good idea to have social scientists and humanities scholars define the social context that led them to identify their problem, issue, or hypothesis. Researchers are great at doing literature reviews. Literature reviews provide context but the context is other research, not a social reality.

Problem formuation happens in relevant contexts in the health sciences and education because both have knowledge-using professions that seek out and apply knowledge. Psychology has various applied fields that work from a research base. Urban planning feeds off geography. And so on. But not much feeds of cultural studies, or a fair amount of other social research.

Not problem but Issue 3
So is the answer to create a middle level of people who dive into social scientific and humanities (SSH) research looking for nuggets of knowledge that can be used more broadly?
Is an answer to ask researchers to define the social benefit they think might derive from their research (the howls of indignation of being so constrained are already ringing in my ears)?
Is there a way of pairing up applied research funding coming from government departments with SSH research funding?
Does SSH research already filter into society at an appropriate rate through newspapers, interviews or radio and tv, magazine articles, trade books, graduates taking knowledge into the world, etc.?
All these questions (with the possible excpetion of the last) were asked. No really firm answers emerged except for the endorsement of Synergies and free public access.

The Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing is pleased to announce the launch both of CCSP and its first title, Book Publishing 1, a compilation of studies on the Canadian and international book publishing industries, edited by Rowland Lorimer, John W. Maxwell, and Jillian G. Shoichet.

Detailed information on the title is outlined below.

Title: Book Publishing 1
Editors: Rowland Lorimer, John W. Maxwell, Jillian G. Shoichet

ISBN 0-9738727-0-5
Softcover
Price: $39.95 CDN
Publisher: CCSP Press

Order Information:
Jo-Anne Ray
CCSP Press
515 West Hastings St.
Vancouver, BC, V6B 5K3


About the Book
Book Publishing 1, the first publication of CCSP Press, presents twelve investigative studies into book publishing. The studies offer a rarely seen inside look into the practices of the book publishing industry. They address title acquisition, operations and management; target marketing; marketing analysis, merchandising, purchasing, and reading; foreign markets; and the impact of changing technology.

Book Publishing 1 is a valuable resource for both academics as a text and for professionals as a reference. For authors and general readers it provides insights into the dynamics of publishing.

About the Editors
Rowland Lorimer is both an academic and a consultant who has carried out research into book and magazine publishing for industry associations as well as various levels of government. He is co-author of Mass Communication in Canada (going into its sixth edition), is past editor and publisher of the Canadian Journal of Communication, and is director of the Master of Publishing program and Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University.
John Maxwell is a faculty member in the Master of Publishing program and also teaches in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. John has degrees in anthropology and publishing and will soon be awarded his PhD in Education. John has extensive experience in electronic publishing technology and is co-director of the PExOD project, a project designed to allow small and independent book publishers to be full participants in the world of digital bibliographic data.
Jillian Shoichet has been a freelance and in-house editor for various educational, publishing, and corporate organizations, and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in publishing. She has degrees in Near Eastern archaeology and religion and in publishing, and is currently working on her PhD in ancient literacy and orality.

Annotated contents
Introduction Rowland Lorimer

Acquisitions and Author Relations
1. Editor to Author: Some Personal Reflections on Getting Published
Susan Juby
Establishing an author-publisher relationship/ what writers need to know about being published/ publishing as combination of art and commerce

2. Blueprint for a Book: Formulating a Meaningful Author-Publisher Contract
Jesse Rebecca Finkelstein
Process of developing an author-publisher contract/ discussion of contract clauses/drawing maximum benefit and protection of interest for both parties

Operations and Management
3. The Dictionary Department at Oxford University Press Canada
Tom Howell
Operation of dictionary department at Oxford University Press/ Dictionary Compilation/ Formatting/ Production/ Sales

4. Project Management and Book Publishing
Marjolein Visser
Title development and production management at Key Porter Books/ contribution of management theory to management system efficiency

5. New-Format Reprints: Creating McClelland & Stewart’s Emblem Editions out of Backlist Titles
Medbh Bidwell
Creation of Emblem Editions/ backlist development/ historical context/ analysis of a successful backlist series

Publishing for Target Markets
6. A Case Study of a Pop Culture Book: From Concept to Completion
Cathryn France
Publication of a book on Lillith Fair/ concept/ acquisition/ production/ legal aspects/ marketing/ effect of distribution through specialized venues

7. The Nature of Marketing in Higher Education Publishing
Leslie J. Carson
Details of marketing plan for educational textbook/ marketing and competitive analysis/ strategy/ product offering/ project analysis

Marketing, Merchandising, Purchasing, and Reading
8. Using Archetypes to Market Sharon: Israel’s Warrior-Politician
Robert Desmarais
Archetypes as marketing vehicles/ brand management/ development, application, and effect of strategic brand marketing campaign

9. Book Reading, Purchasing, Marketing, and Title Production
Rowland Lorimer and Roger Barnes
Overview and summary of six studies on book reading/ purchasing including Canadian trade books, general trade books, children’s books, and audiobooks/ marketing/ merchandising/ title production in Canada

Looking into Foreign Markets
10. A Book Publishers’ Guide to Publishing in China
Xiaoyan Huang
A detailed description of policy and practice in book publishing in China/ publishing process/ exporting books and selling rights to China/ implications of Chinese book market for Canadian publishers

Technology and Change
11. A PEXODyssey: Bibliographic Data Management and the Implementation of PEXOD at the Dundurn Group
Heather Sanderson
Establishing bibliographic data management/ PEXOD overview and development/ PEXOD implementation process at Dundurn Group/ impact and analysis/ implications for future

12. PEXOD: The Publisher’s Extensible Online Database
John W. Maxwell
Role of databases in book publishing/ online bookselling/ implications of PEXOD for publishers

Index

See www.sfu.ca/ccsp/press

Here is a review of a terrific book. The publisher says the New Instrumental Instrument on Cultural Diversity talked of may be passed by UNESCO in October 2005.
The file is available for download here Blockbusters and Trade Wars. Enjoy the read.

Blockbusters and Trade Wars: Popular Culture in a Globalized World by Peter S. Grant and Chris Wood. 2004. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre. 454pp.
This book belongs in every university library and in the possession of anyone who counts him or herself as a person interested in: policy, broadcasting, cultural industries, globalization, international trade in cultural products, copyright and international trade, and Canada’s place in the world.

It is marred a little by its form. I reads as if communications lawyer Peter Grant was persuaded by the publishers to share his knowledge and wisdom with the world but that journalist Chris Wood was brought in to liven up the manuscript because what Grant produced was considered too dry for a market of any size. Wood appears to have added some interesting anecdotes and a few comparisons introduced to carry the reader along. As well, an assiduous editor, perhaps with the help of the authors, has combed the manuscript to ensure that the reader knows that the authors know that they are repeating themselves. Presumably a rigorous re-write was not in the cards. And so, in the end, the book has three voices rather than one—Grant’s (the knowledge and insight); Wood’s (to add interest and anecdote); and the editor’s (organization and writing). Once the reader allows for this three-voiced narrative he or she can get on with gaining from the many benefits this book has to offer.

The importance of Blockbusters and Trade Wars derives in part from the lack of overviews written from a Canadian perspective of Canadian broadcasting and cultural industries policy in an international context. My comparative analysis of mass communication and cultural production was written in 1991 and published by Manchester University Press in 1994. In 1996 Michael Dorland edited a collection that examined Canada's Cultural Industries: Problems, Prospects, and Issues but not in an international context. So this book has been a long time coming. That said, Grant and Wood do a much better job than I was able to do and the integrated policy framework brought to the subject by Grant (in addition its recentness) recommends Blockbusters and Trade Wars.

The book is also important because it is free from the baggage of social scientific theorizing. This freedom from theory allows the authors to describe the actions of countries and corporations rather than exalt or condemn them through a choice of theoretical frameworks. By so positioning the narrative, the authors are best able to argue their thesis. That thesis is, that while we are living in a globalizing age, and while the actions of US-based global corporations (owned by whomever) and their legislators are captives of either imperial ideology or by the near $100 billion trade surplus generated by the US entertainment industries; there are a set of policy measures that can be and are being used to secure a place for domestic cultural expression with global entertainment production. Most importantly, almost as a coda, the authors extend their thesis to claim that this policy framework that has been developed in Canada, has every chance of being adopted more widely. What the book does not touch on, because it happened after the book was written, is the irony of the decade-long champion of these policies, former Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, being dumped by her own political party. In these days of massive spending by the political right on injecting their ideology, their people, and their policies into the parliamentary agendas and laws of the world, to think that the Honourable Minister was sidelined because of a personality conflict or because she was too closely associated with the outgoing leader, is to misinterpret the determination of these bastions of financial power and champions of individualism and the market.

“Part One: Cultural Economics” sets forth the framework that Grant sees as accounting for the excessive dominance of the US in the production and distribution of television, movies, books and sound recordings. Nodding at Michael Porter’s cluster theory to explain the concentration of production in certain geographical areas such as Hollywood, and reminding us of the unpredictability of success of cultural production in the marketplace, Chapter 3 delves into why classical capitalist economic thought fails when applied to cultural expression. In the production of culture there is distinctiveness not comparative advantage. Society is an organic whole a self-determining entity and intrinsic to self-determination is the opportunity to produce one’s own images and make those images available with one’s own community. This discussion alone is worth the price of the book. Key to the argument is the fact that for most cultural goods there are three markets; the audience, the advertiser, and the freelance producers who sell their content to cultural middlemen such as publishers. Economists and international trade tribunals (mostly involving economists, trade lawyers and judges) tend to focus solely on the sale of the audience to advertisers (as does Canada’s Competition Bureau in its examination of media monopolies).

“Part Two: The Cultural Tool Kit” begins with a chapter on the nationality of culture and then examines six different methods by which nations can assist in creating a space for national culture and filling it with successful content. The policies include
• public ownership (of broadcasting);
• content and scheduling quotas (in programming and in prime time for example);
• spending rules (by ‘retailers’ of cultural content to acquire content, e.g., broadcasters, cable companies and the like):
• national ownership (of privately owned culture producing institutions (e.g., television and cable stations, newspapers, book and magazine publishers and so on);
• competition policy (that takes into account the peculiar economics of cultural production); and
• subsidies (of books, magazines, films, etc.).
For the reader who has only a passing interest in the actual intricacies of each mechanism the final chapter of the section, ‘The Tool Kit at Work’ brings them altogether and makes a convincing case that they can work if the citizens of a country have any real interest in their own culture.

“Part Three: The Challenge” is positively exciting in so far as it brings forward a thorough account of the development of the New International Instrument for Cultural Diversity (NIICD) with which Grant has been intimately involved. Of the four chapters in part three, the technology chapter is not as inspired as the rest, however it does have the strength of pointing to the interests all culture producers have in respecting territoriality. “Trade Wars” pulls no punches in looking at the past, present and likely future actions of the US as the dominant producer and exporter. But the inspiring content comes in the last two chapters “A New Direction” and “Room to Grow”.

Most involved in communication and cultural industries have heard of the New International Instrument on Cultural Diversity (NIICD) largely as an effort of former Heritage Minister Sheila Copps. The instrument is meant to serve as a mechanism for establishing a separate set of rules for cultural production that balances the economics of the business with the cultural dimension to create a much healthier foundation for international peace and understanding. Using the NIICD, Grant thinks we can learn to live with, even tame globalization and the cultural imperialism that is inherent in the US, and to a lesser extent, UK domination of international trade in movies, television, sound recording, magazines and books.

The aim of the NIICD is to “sustain the diversity of thought and expression essential to societies’ resilience, adaptation and regeneration and growth.” (p. 315). The measures contained within a NIICD must not stop societies from changing. Nor should they stop foreign products from being heard or seen. Their purpose is to invigorate culture by creating an interaction between the domestic and the international. The rationale behind the NIICD rests on the right to and need for cultural diversity.

I would like to be as optimistic as Grant but I cannot. On the horizon I see market economists and their captured politicians who are not interested in understanding economic subtleties. They are born-again believers in the simplest economics principles central among which is comparative advantage. Grant’s optimism rests on a belief that an ordered universe of law and principles of fairness can prevail in international trade and that policies are agreed to on the basis of evidence that they generate the greatest benefit for the greatest number. The alternative is that power rules and that the current excess power of the US is breeding extremism both for and against it. Thankfully this state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely. The increasing power of Europe, China, India, and even Russia is challenging US hegemony. Once power is more widely shared, perhaps we will see a diminution of terrorism.

In addition to insisting that cultural products are different from normal commodities, Blockbusters argues the economics of the matter—that unrestrained free trade does not yield higher real income for all participants (as the theory comparative advantage claims) but rather leads to the dominance of a few advantaged producers. The authors lend strength to their argument that the world may be moving in the right direction by referencing statements released by numbers of international fora in 1982, 1994, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, all essentially calling for corrective action in addressing trade in cultural products and services. They report the end point as the basing of a NIICD in UNESCO. This is not good news. At least as far back as 1980 with the MacBride report, UNESCO has been the seat of attempts to constrain unfettered free trade. The NIICD is probably viewed by free traders as UNESCO’s latest attempt to establish an anti-free trade agenda in culture dressed up in new language. And they have the power. As the authors point out, for the NIICD to gain any force, the WTO must recognize a UNESCO-authorized NIICD in a supplemental agreement. The possibility of that happening, I suspect, is remote.