Re-Inventing the Book

Re-Inventing the Book: Challenges from the Past for the Publishing Industry chronicles the significant changes that have taken place in the publishing industry in the past few decades and how they have altered the publishing value chain and the structure of the industry itself.

The book examines and discusses how most publishing values, aims, and strategies have been common since the Renaissance. It aims to provide a methodological framework, not only for the understanding, explanation, and interpretation of the current situation, but also for the development of new strategies.

The book features an overview of the publishing industry as it appears today, showing innovative methods and trends, highlighting new opportunities created by information technologies, and identifying challenges. Values discussed include globalization, convergence, access to information, disintermediation, discoverability, innovation, reader engagement, co-creation, and aesthetics in publishing.

Dr Christina Banou is Professor in "Book Policy and Publishing” at the Dep. of Archives, Library Science and Museology, School of Information Science and Informatics, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece. Former Vice Rector for Academic Affairs, International Relations and Extraversion at the Ionian University, she is the Director of the Post-Graduate Programme "Management of Cultural Information”. Her main areas of research interest include publishing, book policy, book history, current trends of the publishing industry, aesthetics of the printed book, reading policy. She has presented papers in refereed journals and has participated at international conferences.

Her book Re-Inventing the Book. Challenges from the Past for the Publishing Industry with a foreword by Prof. Angus Phillips has been published by Elsevier - Chandos Publishing in 2017.

Three monographs of her concerning the publishing industry have been published in Greek: Banou, Christina (2022), "Through the Looking Glass”. The Greek Publishing Companies at a Turning Point, Athens: Papazisis Publishers. Banou, Christina (2012), Gutenberg's Next Step: The Publishing Companies in Greece at the Beginning of the 21st century, Athens: Papazisis Publishers. Banou, Christina (2008), Diachronic Features of the Publishing Industry in the Western World, Athens: Kotinos Publications.