Merchants of Culture by John B Thompson

Researched over four years, Thompson's authoritative survey mimics anthropology's methods and borrows its governing concept of "the field" from Bourdieu. Close to 300 interviews are drawn on as he looks in turn at publishers, retailers and agents, shuttling between the US and UK; some of publishing's most arcane processes, such as the discounts offered to booksellers, are lucidly explained. This may sound offputtingly dry, but Merchants of Culture is enlivened by pseudonymous interviewees who are remarkably and tantalisingly candid; which publisher, you wonder, confessed to taking part in book auctions where "you just hope you don't win", and which Faber executive worried that the alliance of indy publishers it leads is really a nasty conglomerate in disguise? Thompson has revised the book for the paperback edition; but its sole failing is that ebooks and other recent developments are corralled into a chapter on the digital revolution – the time-warped main text has not been adequately updated to reflect them.