The ebook diversifies, but print is here to stay, says Oxford Brookes

Ebook generates 15% of the revenues for some publishers, with the romance genre having a huge slice in the market share, says Angus Phillips, Director, Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

Although digitality has turned the publishing world upside down, Phillips stressed that it is “an exciting time for everyone” as the ebook offer so many opportunities in terms of innovations. The talk, delivered at the London Design Festival event, “Whatever is to become of books?”, at University College London on 17 September 2011, also introduced us to the new classifications in books: ebook, pbook, vanilla book, mook, byook and so on.

In this video, Phillips presented the byook – a format of ebook which is deployed on the smartphone – to the audience. Members of the audience were shown how the byook worked with a Sherlock Holmes novel. Phillips said that the romance genre has a lion share in the ebook market, and the byook format is ideal for ‘discreet’ consumption of such genre, for example if one chooses to read in public places.

The event was supported by UCL Anthropology and co-organised by MSc Digital Anthropology students of UCL.

To find out more about the event and to get involved with the 2012 book project by Sojournposse Purpose, contact us.