J. K. Rowling, Covid-19 and the world of publishing

Abstract

The coronavirus epidemic (Covid-19) unleashed worldwide has had repercussions in all social sectors, and the world of culture in general and of publishing in particular have not been an exception. The need to adopt confinement measures has determined the closure of all public spaces related to reading, such as libraries, bookstores and cultural centers, with serious consequences for the sector that has seen its activity to stop. Faced with this situation, there have been numerous actors involved, such as authors, publishers, bookstores, but also individuals, who have developed a set of initiatives to try to alleviate these effects, both for the editorial segment and for the population. On the one hand, the online acquisition systems, advance purchases, flexible deliveries, etc., have been strengthened. And on the other, from the publishing sector, authors, publishers and booksellers have proposed the release of titles for free online reading, or the development of personalized recommendation systems for readers, among many other initiatives. The consequence of all this has been an important growth in the consumption of digital content, verifiable above all in the increase in loans in systems such E-biblio in Spain, and similar platforms in other countries. These movements, although they are of a conjunctural nature, have revealed the possibility of other forms of consumption and distribution of content, little frequented by a large part of the population that, out of necessity, has tried other reading formulas that always look good as an alternative to traditional ones, either as a complement or as another mode of appropriation and consumption that may be the prevailing one in the future.