Merchants of Culture Quotes

“Good publishers – as one former publisher aptly put it – are market-makers in a world where it is attention, not content, that is scarce.”
― John B. Thompson, Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century

“To publish in the sense of making a book available to the public is easy – and never easier than it is today, when texts posted online could be said to be ‘published’ in some sense. But to publish in the sense of making a book known to the public, visible to them and attracting a sufficient quantum of their attention to encourage them to buy the book and perhaps even to read it, is extremely difficult – and never more difficult than it is today, when the sheer volume of content available to consumers and readers is enough to drown out even the most determined and well-resourced marketing effort.”
― John B. Thompson, Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century

“For publishers are not just employers and financial risk-takers: they are also cultural mediators and arbitrators of quality and taste.”
― John B. Thompson, Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century

“Few industries have had their death foretold more frequently than the book publishing industry, and yet somehow, miraculously, it seems to have survived them all – at least till now.”
― John B. Thompson, Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century