The Research Of Publishing Technology Empowerment Under The Self-publishing Pattern

With the further development of digital publishing,various new publishing forms are emerging.Among them,self-publishing,which can largely cater to the needs of market and readers,becomes increasingly popular and is likely to be the mainstream of future publishing industry.Despite endless debates about it in both the industry and academic circles,it is generally acknowledged that the development of the Internet and the digital technology has considerably promoted the prosperity of self-publishing.In order to investigate the interactive relationship between technology and self-publishing,this thesis,based on the "empowerment" theory,takes the empowerment of self-publishing technology as the main research object and explores the phenomenon of publishing technology empowerment and its influences in the self-publishing pattern,aiming to reveal the key role of technological progress in the transformation of the publishing industry.The thesis adopts a series of research methods,including literature analysis,case analysis and comparative analysis,and five key problems are solved.To begin with,the two major concepts involved in the research,namely "technology empowerment" and"self-publishing",are defined and clarified.The analysis shows that the empowerment of technology is feasible and that to study the publication and dissemination of self-publishing through technology empowerment is also practical.Meanwhile,self-publishing can be regarded as a process of publishing which is funded,published,distributed and marketed by the author,without the participation of traditional publishing institutions.Next,the author respectively investigates the development patterns of self-publishing in three areas,namely Britain and America,mainland China,and Taiwan,and it is found that they represent three different situations of self-publishing worldwide:in Britain and America the self-publishing business shows a tendency of bubble and monopolization and has a relatively mature management system;in mainland China it is still in the stage of exploration and expansion and demonstrates distinctive "Chinese characteristics";in Taiwan its development is relatively stagnant,but under the active promotion of parties concerned,there are signs of growth.And then,an introduction is given of the related technologies of self-publishing,including network information technology,automatic typesetting technology,on-demand publishing technology and reading terminal technology.Moreover,the thesis analyzes how the self-publishing technologies change the existing power pattern of publishing industry in the different stages of publishing activities from the perspective of both the author and the reader.It is revealed that the self-publishing technologies can remove the psychological barriers of the author,ensure his authority to set publication information,binding,pricing,and marketing plan,and allow him a higher royalty di,vision.The reader gains the power to create works and enjoys extensive reading freedom through self-publishing technologies.At last,through a discussion of the impact of self-publishing technology empowerment on publishing relations,publishing industry and publishing culture,it is pointed out that self-publishing poses as a challenge to the traditional publishing order headed by publishing houses.While creating new publishing mode,self-publishing has intensified the market competition and promoted the popularization of publishing culture and modernization of reading culture.Following from the analysis above,the conclusion is reached.The empowerment of the self-publishing technology promotes the transformation of publication and improves the disadvantaged situation of the weak and powerless in publishing activities,such as authors and readers,but it may also cause the imbalance of publishing rights.Traditional publishing houses should reinforce their contacts with authors and readers,enhance publishing integration,and strengthen the training of compound publishing talents,so as to achieve transformation and sustainable development.