Konferenzteilnahme “Bookshops: Online and on the High Street”, Reading, UK

Antragstellende: Nayantara Srinivasan
Fachbereich, Studienrichtung: FB 09, Master British, American and Postcolonial Studies

Thanks to the support of the Santander-Mobilitätsfond, I attended the conference “Bookshops: Online and on the High Street”, held at the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing at the University of Reading (UK) in July 2023. This conference was organized as part of the Annual Bookselling Research Network, and included presentations from book studies and publishing researches from around the world. The conference took place across two days, and included panel sessions such as “Bookshop Profiles,” “Independent Booksellers,” and “Algorithms and Bookselling,” with presentations from academics from the UK, France, Germany, and the USA, among others.

At this conference, I presented a paper, “Digital bookselling and independent bookseller activism in India,” which focuses on contemporary bookselling in the Indian context. I look at the effects of the pandemic on independent bookstores in India, and the steps they have taken in recent years to organize and speak up about the disadvantages they face in comparison to online retailers like Amazon. My panel included a presentation on algorithms used by Amazon and a paper on independent bookstores in Europe; both presentations offered new perspectives on my own research and gave me insight into how these same issues are experienced and addressed in different countries and contexts. One of the other papers, from a PhD candidate at the University of Reading, also focused on bookselling in India, which is an under-researched topic; I appreciated the chance to learn from her presentation and our subsequent interaction. We also had the chance to visit the special collections and archives at the University of Reading. The university has one of the largest collections of archival material related to bookselling, and it was an incredible opportunity to look at some of this material, including letters and old catalogues from bookstores and publishers.

Overall, the conference was an incredible opportunity to meet and hear from researchers around the world working in book studies and publishing research, and I especially appreciated the specialised focus on bookselling, which is my research interest. Several of the researches had also worked in, or owned, their bookstores. The first day of the conference also involved a visit to an independent bookstore in Reading, where we had the opportunity to listen to a set of independent booksellers speak about their experience in the industry.

As my interest in book studies stems from my experience working in publishing, I found it very useful to see this methodological approach which combined professional experience with an academic focus.

This was my first experience presenting at a conference outside of the University of Münster, and it was a very rewarding experience. I learnt a lot, not only from the other presenters, but also from the opportunities for discussion and networking. I plan to develop this paper into my MA thesis, and am very grateful that I had the chance to present these ideas and gain valuable feedback that will help me structure my research in the future.