Beyond e-books: investigating the digital transformation of the publishing industry

Abstract

The rise of remote working and the growing environmental impact of digitalization has become urgent in the wake of the pandemic crisis (Marek, Wińska, Dąbrowski, 2021). This work aims to investigate the digitization of processes and their environmental impact in small cultural publishing houses, with a specific focus on the Italian publishing industry. This industry is mostly made up of small and micro enterprises with limited production structures and financial resources (Filardo, 2021). This kind of enterprises make extensive use of remote work and do not yet have adequate tools to control their environmental impact, so it is increasingly important for this sector to find ways to manage these challenges effectively. The study addresses a gap in the existing literature, which has mainly focused on the digitization of the book product and the reduction of the impact of printing processes (Lebert, 2009; Gilbert, 2015; Benhamou, 2015; Benghozi, Salvador, 2016; Hviid et al., 2017), and highlights the need for a more comprehensive discourse on the digitization of processes and its environmental impact. Through a case study analysis of Cue Press, a small publisher specialized in performing arts, the study seeks to understand how the industry is coping with the digitization of processes and its environmental impact in the situations of small and medium-sized enterprises with limited possibilities. In the end, some good practices and remote management tools will be suggested to make digitization effective and more sustainable in this kind of organizations and hypotheses will be put forward for future studies.