Professor Angus Phillips

Director, Oxford International Centre for Publishing

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Personal Profile

• MA Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Exeter College, Oxford University
• MBA, Warwick Business School, Warwick University
• PhD, Oxford Brookes University
• Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education, Oxford Brookes University

 

Research

Professor Angus Phillips is Director of the Oxford International Centre for Publishing. He has degrees from Oxford and Warwick universities, and before joining Oxford Brookes he ran a trade and reference list at Oxford University Press. He works as a consultant to the publishing industry and is often invited to speak at international conferences and events. His books include Is this a Book? (with Miha Kovač), Inside Book Publishing (with Giles Clark), The Oxford Handbook of Publishing (with Michael Bhaskar), and Turning the Page. His books have been translated into eight languages. He is on the European Advisory Board of Princeton University Press and was a judge for the Bookseller industry awards for four years in a row. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the premier publishing journal Logos.

Research interests include: publishing statistics, the future of the book, digital publishing, international publishing, book covers, literary agents, corporate social responsibility, economic history of publishing, publishing in China.

Editorships

Editor-in-Chief, Logos, published by Brill

Membership of Professional Bodies

• European Advisory Board, Princeton University Press (from 2010)
• External examiner, MA Publishing, University of Exeter (from 2022)
• External examiner, MA Publishing, Manchester Metropolitan University (from 2022) 
• External examiner, MA Publishing, University of Derby, 2016 to 2020
• External examiner, MA Publishing, University College London, 2011 to 2015
• External examiner, MA Publishing, University of Central Lancashire, 2010 to 2014
• External examiner, MA Publishing, University of Plymouth, 2004 to 2009
• Award examiner for MA programmes in the Faculty of Arts, University of Plymouth, 2004 to 2009
• Fellow of Higher Education Academy
• Editorial Board of Learned Publishing 2007 to 2011
• Editorial Board of Convergence 2013 to 2018
• International Advisory Committee for the International Conference on the Book (held at Oxford Brookes in 2005)
• Honorary Researcher, Chinese Institute of Publishing Science
• Chair of the Association for Publishing Education 2010 to 2014
• Judge for The Bookseller Industry Awards: 2010 to 2013

Books and other publications

Angus Phillips and Miha Kovac, Is this a Book? (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Rights sold for Slovenian translation.

Angus Phillips and Michael Bhaskar (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Publishing (2019). Rights sold for Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean translations.

Angus Phillips (ed.), The Cottage by the Highway and other essays on publishing (Brill, 2015).

Angus Phillips, Turning the Page: The evolution of the book (Routledge, 2014). Rights sold for Chinese translation.

Giles Clark and Angus Phillips, Inside Book Publishing (Routledge, sixth edition, 2020). Translated into Korean, Romanian, Chinese, Lithuanian and Croatian.

Bill Cope and Angus Phillips (ed.), The Future of the Academic Journal (Chandos, second edition 2014).

Bill Cope and Angus Phillips (ed.), The Future of the Book in the Digital Age (Chandos, 2006).

Chapters

'The Dynamics of the Book Publishing Industry' in The Routledge Companion to Media Industries, edited by Paul McDonald (Routledge, 2022)

'The Modern Literary Agent' in Contemporary Publishing and the Culture of Books, edited by Alison Baverstock, Richard Bradford and Madelena Gonzalez (Routledge, 2020)

'The Closure of the Printing House' and 'Trade Publishing', in Volume IV of the History of Oxford University Press, edited by Keith Robbins (OUP, 2017)

'Where is the Value in Publishing? The internet and the publishing value chain', in Volume V, The History of the Book in the West: 1914-2000, edited by Alexis Weedon (Ashgate, 2010)

‘The Pleasure and Pain of Reading’, Culture Report - Europe reads (2010). Published by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations – ifa) and the Robert Bosch Foundation (eds.) in Germany, in cooperation with the British Council, the Foundation for German-Polish Cooperation, the Swiss Cultural Foundation Pro Helvetia, and the Portuguese Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

‘How Books are Positioned in the Market’, chapter for Judging a Book by its Cover, edited by Nicole Matthews and Nickianne Moody (Ashgate, 2007)

‘Does the Book have a Future?’, chapter for A Companion to the History of the Book, edited by Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007; new edition 2020)

Journal Articles

With Philip Shaw and Maria Bajo Gutiérrez, 'The Future of the Monograph in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences', Publishing Research Quarterly, 39, 2023.

With Philip Shaw and Maria Bajo Gutiérrez, 'The Death of the Monograph?', Publishing Research Quarterly, 38, 2022.

With Miha Kovac, Adriaan van der Weel, and Rüdiger Wischenbart, 'What is a Book?', Publishing Research Quarterly, 35:3, 2019.

With Miha Kovac, Adriaan van der Weel, and  Rüdiger Wischenbart, 'Book Statistics: What are they good for?', Logos, 28:4, 2017.

'Have We Passed Peak Book? The Uncoupling of Book Sales from Economic Growth', Publishing Research Quarterly, July, 2017.

'Business Models in Journals Publishing', Logos, 24:4, 2013.

'Kicking the Habit: The decline of reading in Europe?', Logos, 21:3-4, 2010.

'Blog to the Future: Journals publishing in the 21st century', Journal of Scholarly Publishing, October 2010

'The Greek Publishing Industry and Professional Development', with Christina Banou, Publishing Research Quarterly, 24:2, June 2008

'Does the Book have a Future?', Logos, 19:1, 2008. Translated into Latvian, appearing as 'Vai gramatia ir nakotne?', World of Libraries, 47, 2009.

'Jane Austen gets a Makeover', Logos, 18:2, 2007

'Cover Story: Cover design in the marketing of fiction', Logos, 18:1, 2007

‘Adding Value: the work of the editor', Chinese Editor's Journal, Beijing, 1/2006

‘Where is the Value in Publishing? The Internet and the Publishing Value Chain’, International Journal of the Book, Volume 2, 2005

‘The Nature of the Relationship between Authors and Publishers’, with M. Saunders, S. Pandit, and D. Chetty, Publishing Research Quarterly, Summer 2005

‘Working in groups in an international publishing class’. Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education 4:3, 2005

Reference Articles

Over 30 entries for the Oxford Companion to the Book (2011)

Review articles in journals including SHARP News, Learned Publishing and The Library

Research Dissemination

Webinar on publishing studies, The State Polytechnic of Creative Media, Indonesia, October 2020

Interviewed on BBC World News, October 2020

'Eight Scenarios for the Future of Publishing', Galley Club, November 2019

‘Scenarios for the Future of Publishing’, Beijing Publishing Forum, August 2019

‘University Presses in the International Environment’, University of Ljubljana, May 2019

'What is a Book?', Breaking Barriers conference, Malta, September 2018.

'Reaching Audiences', MediaBites conference, Amsterdam, June 2018.

'Reading the Cover', Self-Publishing Conference, Leicester University, April 2018.

'Journals Publishing', Conservatoire National de Arts et Métiers (Le Cnam), Paris, March 2018.

'Have we passed Peak Book?', 5th International Conference on Publishing Trends and Contexts, Zadar, Croatia, October 2017

'Trends and Contrasts in Book Design', Conference on Books and Screens and the Reading Brain, Vilnius, Lithuania, September 2017

'‘China Focus: Opportunities in Publishing and Collaboration with the UK’, China Exchange, London, May 2017

'Reading the Cover', Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, April 2017

'Publishing Now', Self-Publishing Conference, Leicester University, April 2017

'Turning the Page: The evolution of the book', Conference of United Bible Societies, Berlin, March 2017

'Three, six or 36: how many basic plots are there in all stories ever written?', Guardian, July 2016

'What now for the book?', Conference on Literature between Paper and Pixels, Aarhus University, May 2016

Interviewed about self-publishing on R4 Open Book, April 2016

'The Wisdom of Crowds: Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing', London Book Fair seminar, April 2016

‘The Language of Publishing: The view from Inside Book Publishing’, 3rd international Conference on Publishing Trends and Contexts, University of Zadar, Croatia, November 2015

‘Turning the Page: The evolution of the book’, Oxford Open Doors, Blackwell’s, Broad St, September 2015

'Creating Value in an Age of Disruption', Conference on the Minority Book, Vilnius University, Lithuania, September 2015

'Trends and Transformations', Peking University seminar, Beijing, 29 August 2015

'Creativity, Coding and Commercial Savvy - fusion skills for a future in publishing?', London Book Fair seminar, April 2015

Seminar on fixed book prices, Oslo, March 2015, organized by the University of Oslo

Visiting Lecturer, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2015 to 2019