Happy Birthday! Publishers' Anniversaries, Celebration, Commemoration, and Commodification

Citation

Squires C (2013) Happy Birthday! Publishers' Anniversaries, Celebration, Commemoration, and Commodification. In: Wootten W, Donaldson & G (eds.) Reading Penguin: A Critical Anthology. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 171-188. http://www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Reading-Penguin--A-Critical-Anthology1-4438-4616-3.htm

Abstract
First paragraph: Why might a publishing company be interested in its past? The answer to such a question might seem obvious to a book collector or a book historian, but to a commercial business, operating in the present and planning publishing programmes for the next few years, the answer is not so evident. "Our job", said Simon Winder, Publishing Director at Penguin Press at the "75 years of Penguin Books" conference at the University of Bristol, "is to be optimistic about the future". Thus, the initial question about why a publishing company might be interested in its past leads to another: for a commercial business, what is the value of their history?

Keywords
Penguin Books; publishing; marketing books