Rationale and relevance

Dutch book publishers are having to hold their ground in a more competitive market and a changing literary field. Turnovers of printed media are decreasing and the sales and payback time of book titles are shrinking due to the large supply and rapid succession of new titles (SMB/GfK, 2012). Competition in the book market is increasing and publishers are now competing not only with each other for authors and prominent places in bookstores, but also with online suppliers of alternatives to books. The current trade book market is predominantly based on bestsellers, and today's bestselling authors soon become celebrities. Publishers have to be more commercial while retaining their top authors and distinguishing themselves from other publishers.

Although publishing is still a people business, the personal networks of publishers now seem to centre less on their traditional gatekeeper function. After the recent merger of the publishing houses Arbeiderspers and Bruna, the former relocated from inside the ring of Amsterdam's canals to an industrial site alongside a motorway in Utrecht, indicating that the role of particular locations may also be changing. The traditional publisher was a distinguished gentleman sitting in his office in a canal-side house in Amsterdam's inner-city, where he would meet with colleagues and authors at illustrious bars. The city of Amsterdam, and specifically its ring of canals, has long been the backdrop to Dutch book publishing (Deinema & Kloosterman, 2012). However, this hegemony may be coming to an end. The publisher of the future might well be an entrepreneur sitting in front of a computer in a modern office park…

This thesis discusses whether the role of place and networks is indeed changing. Book publishing has been studied in fields as diverse as sociology, book history, and book and digital media studies (e.g. Bourdieu, 1983; de Glas, 2003; Dongelmans, 1992; van der Weel, 2011). While there is an extensive literature on the history of publishing and the book, there has been relatively little research on the contemporary publishing field. Thompson's (2005) work on the book publishing industry in Britain and the United States is a notable exception.