Book Industry Study Group, Inc., ed. Including Contributors: Digital Book Printing for Dummies

Bestsellers, defined by the high sales numbers they achieve and the hype they generate, are success stories that periodically galvanise the contemporary book industry. Most publishers actively seek to produce bestsellers, using a range of strategies. Contemporary bestsellers, particularly from peripheral markets and by debut authors, are produced through the strategic joining of two co-existing modes of capitalism: conglomerate capitalism and platform capitalism. This article analyses the publication pathways and reception of two debut bestsellers by Australian authors: Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites and Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz. To analyse these case study titles, we constructed publishing histories, collected five media reviews for each book from reputable publications and literary journals, and scraped the top 100 reviews on Goodreads. These case studies show how the particular textual qualities of each book, highlighted in publishers’ marketing material, shape the media and reader reception of each book, and the mechanisms and strategic alliances with traditional institutional and platform networks at work in producing success in post-digital book culture. Bestsellers show the logics and systems of an industry in flux, and the strategies that can support a debut work to reach a mass audience.

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Draining under gravity in steel galvanization.

ANZIAM Journal ◽

10.21914/anziamj.v61i0.15155 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 61 ◽

pp. C31-C44

Author(s):

Graeme Charles Hocking

Keyword(s):

Free Boundary ◽

Free Boundary Problems ◽

Analytical Description ◽

Study Groups ◽

Study Group ◽

Boundary Problems ◽

Industry Study ◽

Research Collection ◽

Appl Math ◽

Air Knife

The problem of the coating of steel has been considered in several Mathematics in Industry study groups. In this process, after passing through a bath of molten alloy, steel sheeting is drawn upward to allow draining under gravity and stripping using an air knife, leaving a coating of desirable thickness. Here we discuss some aspects of the problem and in particular the gravity draining component. The problem is a very nice introduction to industrial modelling for students, but is also relevant for manufacturing. References Elsaadawy, E. A., Hanumanth, G. S., Balthazaar, A. K. S., McDermid, J. R., Hrymak, A. N. and Forbes, J.F. ``Coating weight model for the continuous hot-dip galvanizing process'', Metal. Mat. Trans. B, 38:413–424, 2007. doi:10.1007/s11663-007-9037-2 Hocking, G. C., Sweatman, W. L., Fitt, A. D., and Roberts M. ``Coating Deformation in the jet stripping process'' in Proceedings of the 2009 Mathematics and Statistics in Industry Study Group, Eds. T. Marchant, M. Edwards, G. Mercer. Wollongong, Austealia, 2010. https://documents.uow.edu.au/content/groups/public/@web/@inf/@math/documents/doc/uow073330.pdf Hocking, G. C., Sweatman, W. L., Fitt, A. D., and Breward, C. ``Deformations arising during air-knife stripping in the galvanization of steel'', in Progress in Industrial Mathematics at ECMI 2010, Eds. M. Gunther, A. Bartel, M. Brunk, S. Schops, M. Striebel. Mathematics in Industry 17, pp. 311-317. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg, 2011. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-25100-9_36 Hocking, G. C., Lavalle, G., Novakovic, R., O'Kiely, D., Thomson, S., Mitchell, S. J., Herterich, R. ``Bananas–-defects in the jet stripping process''. Proceedings of the European Study Group with Industry in Mathematics and Statistics Research Collection. Rome Italy, 2016. https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/handle/10197/10215 Howison, S. D. and King, J. R. ``Explicit solutions to six free-boundary problems to fluid flow and diffusion''. IMA J. Appl. Math. 42:155–175, 1989. doi:10.1093/imamat/42.2.155 Hocking, G. C., Sweatman, W., Fitt, A. D. and Breward, C. ``Deformations during jet-stripping in the galvanizing process''. J. Eng. Math. Tuck Special Issue, 70:297–306, 2011. doi:10.1007/s10665-010-9394-8 Thornton, J. A. and Graff, H. F. ``An analytical description of the jet-finishing process for hot-dip metallic coatings on strip''. Metal. Mat. Trans. B, 7:607–618, 1976. doi:10.1007/BF02698594 Tuck, E. O. ``Continuous coating with gravity and jet stripping''. Phys. Fluids, 26(9):2352–2358, 1983. doi:10.1063/1.864438 Tuck, E. O., Bentwich, M., and van der Hoek, J. ``The free boundary problem for gravity-driven unidirectional viscous flows''. IMA J. Appl. Math. 30:191–208, 1983. doi:10.1093/imamat/30.2.191

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INDEPENDENT AUTHORS’ DEPENDENCE ON BIG TECH: CATEGORIZATION AND GOVERNANCE OF AUTHORS OF COLOR ON AMAZON

AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research ◽

10.5210/spir.v2021i0.12005 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Claire Louise Parnell

Keyword(s):

Publishing Industry ◽

Book Industry ◽

Book Publishing ◽

Profile Data ◽

Digital Platforms ◽

Cultural Contexts ◽

Mixed Methods Approach ◽

Black Authors ◽

Website Analysis ◽

Digital Book

Digital book publishing platforms like Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP are often lauded for enabling independent authors unconnected to established publishers to enter the book industry. Despite the appellation, independent authors are not completely autonomous. Book publishing on digital platforms is intensely mediated by the technology companies on which authors rely to publish and disseminate their work. This paper explores the ways in which Amazon KDP undermines the independence of Black authors through its categorization and content moderation systems. The critical framework for this research combines media and platform studies with publishing studies through the application of an ecology model that analyses the technological, economic and socio-cultural contexts in which books and authors circulate online. (van Dijck, 2013). This paper uses a mixed-methods approach consisting of interviews with authors of color and website analysis that collected metadata from Amazon’s Web API. This paper argues that Amazon perpetuates the discrimination Black authors face within the traditional publishing industry through its technological systems. Amazon’s categorisation system uses profile data that has a tendency to sort books by Black authors into categories defined by race regardless of the categories chosen by independent authors. The visibility of books is also impacted by outcomes of Amazon’s content moderation system, Rekognition, which has been proven to be substantially less accurate in accurately identifying darker-skinned individuals (Buolamwini & Gebru, 2018). Amazon acts as a powerful intermediary in the governance and organisation of content in its marketplace due to the increased datafication of books in this sphere.

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