Digitaliseringens förändring av bokbranschen

Sammanfattning: This is a bachelor thesis, written at the business studies institute, Uppsala Unviersity, exploring how digitalization has affected the Swedish book industry. This is done by studying how the introduction of the e-book has changed the way the publishers work and what problems and opportunities arise with the new way to publish and consume books. The technology optimists, that existed around the turn of the millennium, when the e-book came, made predictions along the lines of the physical book having ceased to exist within five to ten years. But the physical paper books do very much still exist, so haven’t the change happened as predicted? The purpose of this thesis is as follows: How has introduction of the e-book affected the relationship between the Swedish publishers and the book as a whole? This means that we consider the book as a concept, as a resource or product, and study how a change in this product affect publishers. The theoretical framework used is basically classical network theory. We study the book as a resource that exists through relationships with other resources, with the help of the 4R model. The information has been gathered through both a study of literature and interviews with subjects. The litterature study consisted of reading the newspaper Svensk Bokhandel (SvB) Years 2004-2010. It provided us with enough information to make a network map of the actors within the Swedish book industry. From this network map identified the key actors and interviews took place with a number of these. The empirical data has first been split into two scenarios; the book industry around year 2000 and 2012. The information gathered about these two points in time were then separated into the four types of resources defined by the theory. This was done to illustrate the changes that has occurred during the past decade. The interfaces between resources were then examined in the analysis and the changes in weight and variation that occurred was noted. The reasons that caused the observed transformations of the interactions has been investigated and these have been noted. The conclusion that has been reached is that the weight of the network is relatively unchanged while the overall variation has increased. This change in variation have taken the guise of new flows of information and new ways to process, distribute and consume the book. The essay ends with a discussion of the book industry's future and the parallels and differences to markets that have undergone similar changes.