This is a bachelor thesis, written at the business studies institute, Uppsala Unviersity, exploring how digitalization has affected the Swedish book industry. This is done by studying how the introduction of the e-book has changed the way the publishers work and what problems and opportunities arise with the new way to publish and consume books. The technology optimists, that existed around the turn of the millennium, when the e-book came, made predictions along the lines of the physical book having ceased to exist within five to ten years. But the physical paper books do very much still exist, so haven’t the change happened as predicted? The purpose of this thesis is as follows: How has introduction of the e-book affected the relationship between the Swedish publishers and the book as a whole? This means that we consider the book as a concept, as a resource or product, and study how a change in this product affect publishers. The theoretical framework used is basically classical network theory. We study the book as a resource that exists through relationships with other resources, with the help of the 4R model. The information has been gathered through both a study of literature and interviews with subjects. The litterature study consisted of reading the newspaper Svensk Bokhandel (SvB) Years 2004-2010. It provided us with enough information to make a network map of the actors within the Swedish book industry. From this network map identified the key actors and interviews took place with a number of these. The empirical data has first been split into two scenarios; the book industry around year 2000 and 2012. The information gathered about these two points in time were then separated into the four types of resources defined by the theory. This was done to illustrate the changes that has occurred during the past decade. The interfaces between resources were then examined in the analysis and the changes in weight and variation that occurred was noted. The reasons that caused the observed transformations of the interactions has been investigated and these have been noted. The conclusion that has been reached is that the weight of the network is relatively unchanged while the overall variation has increased. This change in variation have taken the guise of new flows of information and new ways to process, distribute and consume the book. The essay ends with a discussion of the book industry's future and the parallels and differences to markets that have undergone similar changes. / Detta är en kandidatuppsats, skriven vid företagsekonomiska institutionen vid Uppsala unviersitet, som undersöker hur digitaliseringen har påverkat den svenska bokbranschen. Detta görs genom att studera hur e-boken har förändrat förlagens sätt att arbeta samt vilka problem och förutsättningar som uppkommit med de nya sättet att publicera, distribuera och konsumera böcker. Den stora teknikoptimism som fanns kring millennieskiftet då e-boken kom gav tongångar i stil med att den fysiska boken inom fem till tio år skulle ha upphört att publiceras. Pappersböcker säljs i hög grad fortfarande, och varför har förändringen inte skett snabbare? Uppsatsens syfte lyder enligt följande: Hur har e-bokens inträde på marknaden påverkat relationen mellan de svenska förlagen och boken som en enhet? Den teoretiska referensram som använts är i grund och botten klassisk nätverksteori. Vi studerar boken som en resurs som existerar i form av relationer och kopplingar till andra resurser, med hjälp av den s.k. 4R-modellen. Undersökningen är blandad litteraturstudie och intervjubaserad. Litterturstudien bestod av att läsa tidningen Svensk Bokhandel(SvB) årgångarna 2004-2010. Det medgav en klar nätverkskarta över vilka aktörer som verkade inom den svenska bokbranschen. Utifrån denna nätverkskarta identifierades de centrala aktörerna och intervjuer skedde med ett antal av dessa. Empirin har först delats upp i två scenarion; bokbranschen kring 2000 samt 2012. Den information som innehafts angående de två tidpunkterna separerades sedan i de fyra typerna av resurserna som definieras av teorin. Detta för att belysa de förändringar som skett under det senaste decenniet. Gränssnitten mellan resurserna undersöktes sedan i analysen och de förändringar i tyngd och variation som skett noterades. De anledningar som orsakat de observerade transformationerna i interaktionerna har undersökts och även dessa har noterats. Den slutsats som nåtts är att tyngden inom nätverket är relativt oförändrad medans den generella variationen har ökat. Denna variationsförändring har tagit skepnad av nya informationskanaler samt nya sätt att bearbeta, distribuera och konsumera boken. Uppsatsen avslutas med en diskussion kring bokbranschens framtid samt paralleller och skillnader mot marknader som genomgått likande förändringar.

This thesis explores the position of book blogs in the literary system through Robert Escarpit's socio-literary model of the book market. Simultaneously the thesis serves as a test for Escarpit's theory: by actively applying his theory and model to a very new and contemporary actor on the book market I hoped to reach or confirm new insights into the usefulness and validity of Escarpit's work for contemporary socio-literary studies. Three book blogs were selected for the analysis and interviews were carried out with the authors. The interview questions were formulated specifically for the purpose of extracting the kind of information necessary for an analysis using Escarpit‟s theory. As a complement to the interviews, statistics on the type of books reviewed on the blogs were also compiled. Together, both the interviews and the statistics led me to the conclusion that the book blogs could fairly easily be placed into the cultivated literary circuit in Escarpit's model; however there was also a possibility that the blogs could be a blockade-breaker in his model depending on certain factors. Regarding Escarpit's theory as a whole, the analysis illuminated an important issue: Escarpit's model of the book market presupposes that literature has a certain societal value, however it appears that this presumption is problematic because literature's status in society has changed. At the same time it was also revealed that Escarpit's concept of closed "literary circuits" in which books circulate is still current and very applicable to today's book market. As a result I do not discount Escarpit's theory altogether, but rather endorse moving forward from Escarpit's original book market model to the Danish literary sociologist Hans Hertel's revised and further developed version of it. / P6