Publishing Research Quarterly

An affordance “refers to the fact that the physical properties of an object make possible different functions for the person perceiving or using that object” (Sellen and Harper in The myth of the paperless office. The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002). Historically, authors, publishers and editors have preferred to check and mark up hard-copy page proofs because it has been easy and flexible to read, cross-reference and annotate. Ironically, changes to the physical properties of computer hardware, as well as improvements to software such as Adobe Acrobat, are eroding our nostalgic preference for paper mark-up and highlighting paper’s inherent limitations. This article compares the affordances of paper in regard to editorial mark-up with those of digital, and demonstrates how digital affordances have impacted positively on editors’ workflow within educational publishing’s highly pressured production process. Specifically, how authors are supplied with complete electronic copy from previous editions and how editors perform their paperless mark-up.

Learning how to evaluate reading texts should be an important part of preservice training. This study used a simulated textbook selection process to compare differences in the consistency of experimental and control groups in evaluating textbooks. The experimental groups, who were required to define their criteria operationally, were more consistent in their evaluations than the control group, who used traditional checklists.

A brief review is presented of the Trade book publishing industry in Germany with a focus on bestsellers, authors and titles, acquisitions and mergers of publishers as well as booksellers and distributors. The data for the Leipzig Book Fair and Frankfurt Book Fair is presented. The article concludes with a review of awards and prizes presented to authors in 2008.

Threats to professional and scholarly publishers abound since publishing is at a strategic inflection point. The inability of users to identity quality information, the advent of new technologies and services, and the fact that users want a variety of experiences all threaten your well-being. However, focusing on marketing, editorial, reputation, and by partnering effectively, publishers can avail themselves of the marketing opportunities presented, ironically enough, by the very threats themselves.

The role of the literary agent and the reception granted agents by publishers have changed markedly over the course of the twentieth century. Henry Holt’s views of agents, written in the first decade of the century, help define the status and activities of agents at that time. These are compared with the role of agents today, using archival sources, the book trade literature, and interviews.

This article reports on the Australian Publishing Industry Workforce Survey on Diversity and Inclusion, conducted in 2022 and co-funded by the University of Melbourne and the Australian Publishers’ Association. Through comparison with similar surveys from the UK and the US and Australian population data, we show that, as in those nations, the Australian publishing industry workforce is disproportionately White, with low representation of people of Asian, African and European cultural identities. The Australian industry lags in representation of First Nations Australians and inclusion of disabled people; is largely female, especially at the lower levels; is highly educated; and has high LGBTQ + representation. A striking finding from our survey is the very high proportion (59%) of Australian publishing workers with mental health conditions, a rate that may be related to the timing of our survey in the aftermath of COVID-19 restrictions but warrants close monitoring. Overall, the Australian survey findings should strengthen a global whole-of-industry commitment to structural changes that redress inequities, create positive workplaces and foster richer, more diverse cultural production.