Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Writing in Britain

by Claire Squires

This is an important study of the publishing of contemporary writing in Britain. It analyzes the changing social, economic and cultural environment of the publishing industry in the 1990s-2000s, and investigates its impact on genre, authorship and reading. It includes case studies of Trainspotting and the His Dark Materials trilogy.

Genres: Nonfiction

246 pages, Paperback

First published October 11, 2007

About the author

Professor Claire Squires is Director of the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communications at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and director of the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities. Her publications include Marketing Literature: The Making of Contemporary Writing in Britain (2007) and as co-editor, the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: Volume 7, The Twentieth Century and Beyond (2019). With Beth Driscoll, she is co-founder of the conceptual school Ullapoolism, with their jointly authored publications, including Publishing Bestsellers: Buzz and the Frankfurt Book Fair (2020) and articles on book festivals, sexual harassment in publishing, and the smell of books.

Reviews

[Kelly]

- Very useful and clearly articulated theory that is easy to read
- makes the interdisciplinary nature of book marketing and book histories functional (a relief for me…I’ve been spinning my wheels trying to make connections I didn’t have language for)
- great case studies I’d recommend publishing and media students read
- take with a grain of salt — published in 2007 and British market/social context

[Airaology]

Super helpful and an eye opener to the publishing world

[モーリー]

As the blurb says, this is an important study of an understudied area. The author rightly notes that the history of the book tends to be just that -- history rather than study of anything contemporary. The book itself, however, is lacking in its structure and argument, and so I can't recommend it as more than something one should be aware of.

Specifically, it reads like a poorly-structured dissertation: it begins with a summary-laden literature review as the first part, and overly detailed case studies as the second part. The book would have been far more effective and engaging had these been integrated, and theory brought up (and discussed, not summarized) as required by the topics and the author's argument about each. Note that I said topics rather than cases, because case studies are a terrible way, in general, to structure something. Focusing on the argument, rather than letting the sources determine your structure, is the way to go.

But it makes me wonder, is the book structured this way because it has no real argument? I don't think that's the case, but the structure does its job in burying the argument so deeply it's hard to find it.

I just wanted more meat from this book. I skimmed over the lengthy summaries of sources I had already read (and that many other readers will have already come across, too), such as Bourdieu and Darnton's seminal works, and wished that these had been relegated to footnotes if anything. I skimmed while hoping to find the author's voice, but it rarely shone through.

It is perhaps unfair to berate an academic book for its writing style, but in this case, it's of paramount importance: the writing is in the way of the content.

[Carmen Thong]

Excellent, readable, informative - a joy.