Book Publishing and the Internet

"Book Publishing and the Internet?" is the English version of the second edition of a cult classic for editors and publishers, writers, literary agents, booksellers, scholars and students of digital humanities and history of the book and everybody interested in the fascinating recent history of publishing and digital media. With the first edition of this "impossible handbook" in 2001 Brunella Longo explained risks and opportunities of ecommerce, ebooks and print on demand. This new edition includes an introduction and five new chapters rich of insight and comparisons, plus historical data for surprising discoveries of data, forecasts and case histories spanning over two decades.==================EXTRACTS FROM THE INTRODUCTION: Book Publishing and the Internet is the English edition of La nuova editoria vent'anni dopo (2022). It offers a reflective tool for decision making and for the strategic review of the organisational changes, the investments and the policies needed to remain relevant in the digital age and reinvent products and processes. The book aims at reaching also a wider audience of people interested in the history of the digital, offering a source of documentation and research. Chapters two, three and four cover e-commerce and other industrial aspects, ebooks and the challenges of reading on screens in the digital social environments and the art of printing in the so called postprint age, respectively. The focus is on the huge transformations the book publishing sector has been going through over the last two or three decades due to the development of the Internet economy and its digital infrastructure: technical frameworks and standards but also legislation, governance and policies and of course professional skills and social behaviours that have been having terrific consequences on production and consumptions of all forms and genres of books. This work would not exist if in 2000 I had not written La nuova editoria, published in 2001 [...] that went out of print after few years. Chapter one, "A book returning to life", recounts my personal journey following the publication of La nuova editoria, explains the creative context of the first generation of Internet endeavours and the complexity of stakeholders management after 2001.[...]Finally, one year has passed since the publication of the Italian edition on this book. Between then and now the hype about generative artificial intelligence has possibly reached its peak with marketing rumours and important initiatives about the impact AI will have for authors, media and publishers of any size. I am quite relieved to conclude that nothing I wrote for the Italian edition required adjustments or revisions for the English one, against the backdrop of such great excitement, news and concerns: on the contrary, the public debates about the matter will possibly help the reader to engage deeper with my text that some insiders have had access to and have anticipated for public consultations, seminars and debates in recent months. However, something has indeed increased considerably over the last year and it is the public attention to problems of information security, accessibility and preservation of ebooks and digital contents. It will become clear from the first and the last chapters of Book Publishing and the Internet that the very purpose of making a contribution to digital preservation and history of the digital motivated me to write and publish this book.