Promoting Book Culture – Measures and Efficiency

Abstract

Politicians, scholars and book lobby groups all agree on the necessity of book promotion to a diverse and living book culture. In consequence, cultural policies throughout Europe include book promotion and reading as a part of their objectives. These objectives of cultural politics have been criticized as being vague; the countries do not specify their intentions when intervening in the market in favor of cultural goods such as books. In theory, book promotion is needed to balance many factors such as the detrimental influences of the free market. At the base of this argumentation is the crucial differentiation between books and other goods. The subjacent tension between books being, on the one hand, cultural goods and instruments of culture and, on the other hand, »books as products of a profit-making business« is to be negotiated by book promotion.