#paratextual analysis

[betterbooksandthings]

How We Sell Stories: A Brief History of Paratext | Book Riot

What is paratext and how does it impact your reading experience? A history of paratext and what it offers us about a book.

Whether a book is self-published or traditionally published, the paratext or gift wrap of a story is carefully considered. At the end of the day, bad paratext can misrepresent the genre of a novel and turn readers off. But, you know you have amazing paratext when you sink into a book seamlessly as the wrapping perfectly complements and sells the content. So, now that we are all acquainted, why don’t we crack open the spine of the topic and look into the history?

[morpheme-publishing]

The secret lives of ebooks

A paratextual analysis illuminates a veil of usage statistics

Jonathan H. Harwell, Erin Gallagher

PDF Download

Abstract

This study applies the method of paratextual analysis to six electronic books, or ebooks, in an academic library collection at a small liberal arts college. Two books are selected from each of three platforms: ebrary, EBSCO, and SpringerLink. The characteristics of each book are described, including design and readership, as well as 2 years of usage statistics from the specific library, and altmetrics where available. The paratextual study leads to a closer investigation of the usage statistics themselves and concludes that despite industry standards, they are not calculated consistently across vendor platforms and that while these data are invisible to researchers outside of the library, there are also essential elements that librarians mistakenly take at face value when comparing ebook usage from multiple vendors.

Read More