MöbiusMöbius
  • Our story
  • Open call
  • News
  • Community
  • Join Us
  • Our story
  • Open call
  • News
  • Community
  • Join Us
Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

The publishing industry through a cross-media approach. The example of the Möbius project in exploring new applications for the book sector and the role of the prosumer

admin2022-03-08T10:12:56+01:00

Over the last decades, the adoption of digital technology led to the transformation of entire traditional sectors. This huge transformation has been defined as “convergence” (Chon et al., 2003). The term convergence has been widely used in literature over time in several disciplines, from social sciences to natural sciences. For this reason, it has different interpretations and multiple descriptions (Latzer 2013). In line with this, the concept has been described several times as one of the most known buzzwords of the 1990s (Latzer, 2014). The revolution of the Web 2.0 and further transformations such as social media, digital television and wireless communication directed the term convergence to gain high attention, improving the level of detail of the meaning and narrowing the boundaries of the definition. In the case of the creative and cultural industries, such massive use of technologies allowed to create new business models, adopt new ways of interaction among users, and develop new consumptions paths, letting emerge a more cross-sectoral attitude toward contents’ creation.

In the case of the publishing industry, it is possible to talk about cross-media publishing. As reported by Veglis et al. (2016), “Cross-media can be defined as the production of any content (news, music, text, images, etc.) for more than one media platform/channel (for example print, Web, and TV) within the same media organization (Veglis, 2005). The term refers to integrated experiences across multiple media, including the Internet, video and film, broadcast and cable TV, mobile devices, DVD, print, and radio (Davidson et al., 2010)”. As reported in the literature, cross-media usually implies a high level of user engagement, redefining the traditional value chain. 

The Möbius project embraces the importance of the cross-media approach by exploring and investigating the definition of an enriched reading experience improved through audio-visual content provision. In the definition of such an innovative approach to reading, the role of the prosumer is central.

As reported by De Rosa et al. (2022), “the prosumer is an individual that can produce or improve goods and services they will eventually consume. In particular, in the publishing industry, the prosumer includes publisher-managed communities, and the millions of users participating and contributing to online communities of interest (e.g., fanfiction communities) that remain utterly untapped”. In this sense, the prosumer is no longer positioned at the end of the value chain but is central to the provision of contents and its fruition. 

One of the aims of the Möbius project is to explore the role of the prosumer for the publishing sector as a key stakeholder to reshape a traditional value chain. The engagement of prosumers in the value chain can make a difference also in determining how to frame and design cross-media content and solutions. Indeed, as reported by Noorda and Berens (2021), one important finding of their study on the book sector worldwide is that “avid book engagers are equivalently active across other media. Rather than competing for customers, book and media professionals might think about how their product could benefit from cross-media discovery. We have found that the silos between media, and between parts of the publishing industry, are porous”.

The publishing sector faces an interesting transformation that will lead the industry to become more transversal rather than vertical. But companies in the industry have to learn more about consumer behaviours and cross-media opportunities before transforming their business. Accordingly, better and increased knowledge on the needs and behaviours of the prosumers could be beneficial in driving such inspiring transformation for the entire publishing sector. Möbius outputs, namely the Prosumer Intelligence Toolkit and the Möbius Book, aim to improve prosumers’ knowledge to inform and influence new business models and innovative ways to experience books.

Simona de Rosa | Member of the Board of Directors at the DEN Institute


References 

Chon, B.S., Choi, J.H,, Barnett, G.A., Danowski J.A., and Joo, S.E. 2003. A Structural Analysis of Media Convergence: Cross-Industry Mergers and Acquisitions in the Information

Davidson, D. (Ed.) 2010. Cross-media communications: An introduction to the art of creating integrated media experiences. ETC Press.

De Rosa, S., Jennes, I., Van den Broeck, W., Van Dam, T., Cardenas, P. C., & Nicolai, A. 2022. The Role of Prosumer in Reshaping the Publishing Industry: Preliminary Findings from the Möbius Project. Publishing Research Quarterly, 1-10.

Latzer, M. 2014. Convergence, Co-evolution and Complexity in European Communication Policy. In K. Donders, C. Pauwels and J. Loisen, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of European Media Policy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Latzer, M. 2013. Media Convergence. In C. Handke & R. Towse (Eds.), Handbook of the Digital Creative Economy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, forthcoming.

Noorda, R., & Inman Berens, K. 2021. Immersive Media and Books 2020: New Insights About Book Pirates, Libraries and Discovery, Millennials, and Cross-Media Engagement: Before and During COVID.

Veglis, A. 2005. Implementation of a computer-supported collaborative work system in a newspaper. WSEAS Transactions on Information Science and Applications, 2, 891–902.

Veglis, A., Dimoulas, C., and Kalliris, G. Towards Intelligent Cross-Media Publishing: Media Practices and Technology Convergence Perspectives. In Lugmayr, A., & Dal Zotto, C. (Eds). 2016. Media Convergence Handbook-Vol. 1. Journalism, Broadcasting, and Social Media Aspects of Convergence. Springer Berlin. Industries, Journal of Media Economics, 16:3, 141-157.


Related Posts

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

Reading Rationals: Consciously Unconscious Customer Centricity

In this post Markus Fertig, PR Manager at MVB, introduces us to the Reading Rationals. A new standard in... read more

Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash

Business exploitation scenarios for prosumer book publishing

This article presents IMEC-SMIT’s business modellers. Due to the importance of the prosumer in the Möbius project, its complicated... read more

Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash

The business of book publishing: when the encyclopedia salesperson is uploaded to the cloud

This is the third instalment of four publications that aim to identify some of the trends of the twenty-first-century book industry by uncovering its past.  The dust that covers a book in... read more

Foto de Jason Goodman en Unsplash

Predicting content popularity in fanfiction communities

In this post, Eurecat’s Computational Social Science team presents a model for predicting the popularity of content in fanfiction... read more

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

The end of books, a non-sense

This is the second instalment of four publications that will outline the on-going evolution of the book industry.  Books create conversations, debates, controversies, and every generation has its titles. Sometimes... read more

The publishing sector, at the edge of a fundamental change

This is the first installment of a four-part publication that will introduce the changes in one of the most important... read more

Stay connected

AvatarMöbius@mobius_europe·
1 Jul

💡Do you prefer to read on paper or on screen? This dilemma arises constantly, but here it is explainedwhat has happened to traditional reading after the pandemic. Discovering and reading go hand in hand, join us! 🔗👉

https://www.ft.com/content/a1768ded-e039-4c3b-8590-1d5d811ed1c2

📸 Sincerely Media en Unsplash

Reply on Twitter 1542878268495470593Retweet on Twitter 15428782684954705931Like on Twitter 15428782684954705932
AvatarMöbius@mobius_europe·
30 Jun

Möbius Awards Ceremony🏆 The winners of the open call for manuscripts were announced!

👉Meet the winner of the first mobius book
👉Get to know the project and find out how you can be the next one.
👉Discover the winners

Enjoy the full event here 🔗https://youtu.be/elz4tisizM4

Reply on Twitter 1542535943671922688Retweet on Twitter 1542535943671922688Like on Twitter 15425359436719226881
⏰THE MÖBIUS OPEN CALL IS CLOSING TOMORROW! 'Th ⏰THE MÖBIUS OPEN CALL IS CLOSING TOMORROW!

'The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.' The Nobel Prize Dennis Gabor once said, which seemed to be visioning what the Möbius project aims to do: create the world of tomorrow with the values we dream today according to the New European Bauhaus.🚀

Are you thrilled to be part of it? Then, do not hesitate to participate in the Möbius Open Call! 
 
🥇1,500€ will be awarded for the best story 

 🥈🥉500€ will be awarded for each of the 2nd and 3rd places.  

 🎫The prizes will be delivered in kind 
 
 Eligibility conditions: 

 💡Unpublished work 

 📄Max. length of 6.000 characters (including spaces) 

 🌍Participants must be of legal age (>18) and EU-citizens (plus Norway and Iceland) 

 💬Languages: English, Italian and Spanish  

 🗓Deadline: TOMORROW!
 👉 Link in bio!
The Möbius Open Call is about to close! Don't pro The Möbius Open Call is about to close! Don't procrastinate the submission of your manuscript because there are huge things that can come up!  

🥇1,500€ will be awarded for the best story 

 🥈🥉500€ will be awarded for each of the 2nd and 3rd places.  

 🎫The prizes will be delivered in kind 

Eligibility conditions: 

 💡Unpublished work 

 📄Max. length of 6.000 characters (including spaces) 

 🌍Participants must be of legal age (>18) and EU-citizens (plus Norway and Iceland) 

 💬Languages: English, Italian and Spanish 

 🗓Deadline: January 15th, 2022 

Stay connected! 

Link in bio!
🟣APPLY TO THE MÖBIUS OPEN CALL! This is a 🟣APPLY TO THE MÖBIUS OPEN CALL! 

This is a call to all writers, whether professional or amateur🤩! We are looking for short original fantasy stories. The winning manuscript will become the 1st Möbius Book, a cross-media experience involving a 3D audio and virtual reality production and art installation! We want authors to imagine and build a beautiful and liveable future, the future we dream about. Participate now in the creation of the #MobiusBook!🔝 

 🥇1,500€ will be awarded for the best story 

 🥈🥉500€ will be awarded for each of the 2nd and 3rd places.  

 🎫The prizes will be delivered in kind 

Eligibility conditions: 

 💡Unpublished work 

 📄Max. length of 6.000 characters (including spaces) 

 🌍Participants must be of legal age (>18) and EU-citizens (plus Norway and Iceland) 

 💬Languages: English, Italian and Spanish 

 🗓Deadline: January 15th, 2022 

 Link in bio!
🟣 Does this slogan ring a bell? “A book for t 🟣 Does this slogan ring a bell? “A book for the price of a pack of cigarettes” It was from Allen Lane, who started the @penguinrandomhouse

After spending a weekend with world-famous author Agatha Christie, Lane realized that there were no quality books available in train stations, only magazines and pulp fiction. To ensure the success of his business model, he had to sell at least 17,000 copies of each book he published, yet after just one year, three million copies of the first ten published books of the new house were sold! 📚
👉 Link in bio!
🖊Marjorie Grassler
🟣Did you know that the five genres that are mos 🟣Did you know that the five genres that are most likely to generate bestsellers according to Nielsen Book Data are general and literary fiction; children's fiction, crime, thriller and adventure; young adult fiction and romance and sagas?

👉 Link in bio!
🖊Marjorie Grassler
🟣 With the arrival of the internet and other te 🟣 With the arrival of the internet and other technologies, the publishing sector had to dig to its deeper roots to extract new formats to reach its audiences 📚. So many business models have emerged to tackle the digital disruption, adapting sometimes the old way of working to the online and interactive environment. The encyclopedia salesperson has not disappeared; they have only been uploaded to the cloud!

👉 Link in bio!
 🖊Marjorie Grassler

#mobiusbook #booklovers #bookstagram #techlover #cloud
🟪Book publishing is the largest cultural indust 🟪Book publishing is the largest cultural industry in Europe🤩

💡Did you know that the total market value is €36-38 billion? (@europeancommission)

The majority of the world’s top publishing groups are European-owned: six to eight of the top 10 publishing groups, according to the annual Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry).” 🌍🚀

Source: Publishing Perspectives

#mobiusbook #booklovers #inspiration #publishing #culture #europe #h2020
🟣 Did you know that e-books are 15-20% cheaper 🟣 Did you know that e-books are 15-20% cheaper to produce than physically books? 🤩 Ebooks are often cheaper in the long run than traditional books because there are no printing fees associated with them 🚀 

Source: @breobox

📸 Photo by Perfecto Capucine on Unsplash
🟣Looking for fan fiction enthusiasts to join 🟣Looking for  fan fiction enthusiasts  to join an online discussion on  new reading experiences  next Thursday!

✨ Interested in joining? 

👉Leave your details in the link you will find in the bio and we'll reach out to you
🟣🗣 Did you know that in Europe every year th 🟣🗣 Did you know that in Europe every year there are 500.000 titles published and there are 22 millions of titles available? Looking at longer term trends, up to 2007 there was steady growth both in terms of turnover and of title output. In 2008 title production kept growing whilst turnover, adjusting for exchange rates, experienced a flat year. 2009 showed a slight decrease in turnover (accounting for exchange rates) and a slowdown of title growth 📚. 

💡 The crisis had less of an impact on publishing when compared to most other sectors. In 2010, growth resumed (especially exports), although favoured by exchange rates. 📖In 2011 and 2012, the market went down, and title production growth was sluggish; the e-book market grew rapidly, and exports were strong. In 2013 and 2014 the market slowed down again, with the most notable trends being the continuous growth of the e-book market and the good performance of exports, which became even stronger from 2015 to 2017. 

📲The e-book market (now nearing 10% of the total) showed signs of stagnation for the last 5 years (but it could be a matter of capturing the right data), whereas audio book sales exploded in 2019, giving new impetus to digital sales. If 2018 marked a trend reversal in the recovery process started in 2015, 2019 confirmed the positive trend🚀. 

Source: @fedeuropeanpublishers
🟪 💡 “We may be drowning and not even know 🟪 💡 “We may be drowning and not even know it.” Philip Jones, the Bookseller. This sentence opens a discussion on the turbulence created in traditional value chains in the latest edition of The Business of Books 2019. It is an urgent call for action for an industry that is hardly acknowledging that book and reading markets have changed profoundly and have entered the “attention economy” in which books, authors, publishers and retailers find themselves competing against anything and everybody else that connects with the audience. 

Deeper shifts in many of these markets require us to dive beneath the Surface. From Argetina Brazil and Mexico, to the UK and to a slightly less extent, even traditionalist Germany, self-publishing has managed to establish itself as a new industry segment of significant scope -one that has achieved remarkable economic success. However, due to a lack of data, our undestanding of this segment is appallingly incomplete📚

Source: The Business of Books 2019

📸 Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

#mobiusbook #stories #booklovers #bookaholics #freshthoughts #hypertext #readers #bookstagram #bookaddict #inspiration
🟪The closure of the bookshops has been devastat 🟪The closure of the bookshops has been devastating for the publishing sector. The Spanish ones had 22’5% of losses during the pandemic, as explained by the sector (elperiodico). ⁠
⁠
Product offerings consumer preferences and consumption patterns are becoming more liquid and segmented by various factors, they include different perspectives on books, reading and audio consumption 💡.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 957185