White paper on creativity - ebla center

Chapter 8hand, have indeed increaseddistribution, but almost always only ofbestsellers. And, we should add, almostonly bestsellers promoted by the bigmedia companies, especially television.A view of the publishing industryfocused only on the numericalassessment of sales and the genericpromotion of reading presumed to be avalue in itself is liable to underestimatethe problem by seeing, for example, thesudden rise in sales in 2003-2004 inoveroptimistic terms. If we wish toassess the sector as a creative industry,we must take into account this aspect,i.e. the risk that the strategies for rapidgrowth in sales and revenue actuallyonly really favour less innovativeproducts.There is another figure which shouldgive food for thought. In the last 30years of the 20th century an importantsector of national publishing life wasencyclopaedic-style serialised “largeworks”, which, among other things,made it possible to set up importantresearch work in the field of humansciences and also in some sectors ofnatural sciences, and the popularising ofnew knowledge, often for nonspecialisedreaders. The competitionfrom the Internet, but also thecannibalisation of the “large works” bynews<strong>paper</strong> stands has led in the lastdecade to less willingness to invest inthe sector by the publishing housespreviously most involved in it. Althoughreaching a larger public, the “re-run”products sold at news<strong>paper</strong> stands couldhave long-term negative effects on trulyinnovative productions..Publishing: the production chain.The production of books has changedeven more rapidly than readership anddistribution channels in recent years.Indeed, we can now argue that while thephysical form of the final product(despite many predictions to thecontrary) is basically still the same, thewhole process of making it has changed.This is true at technological level, sincedigitisation has brought a previouslyinconceivable streamlining to all stagesin the production processes: booksbegin as computer files and are usuallysent to the publishers by email to beedited using the same programmes.They are then laid out, at times withillustrations, by using other softwareand then sent directly to the printers.The technological streamlining,combined with intense efforts made bymanagement (whose professional rootsare often in industries other thanpublishing) to cut costs, has encouragedthe widespread phenomena ofoutsourcing. Many activities previouslycarried out within publishing houses,from editing to proofreading, have beentransferred to small firms, often highlyskilled but economically fragile.Moreover, working on books may onlybe one of their businesses: others mayinclude designing websites or servicesfor magazines and quite often alsocorporate communications services. Inhousepublishing staff now mainly onlydeal with the task of selecting andliasing with authors, managing rightsand promoting the brand name. Todaymost Italian publishers have from twoto nine employees; only 254 companieshave over ten.The average quality of books in terms ofcontent has not deteriorated, but thereWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 200