Cirrus@Austlit

'Book publishing increasingly functions as a component of the larger media economy. Multinational media conglomerates with holdings in publishing look to their book divisions as providers of media ‘content'. Digitised content may arise out of a book property and be adapted for use in other, screen-based media such as film, television or computer games. Conversely, content may be incubated in screen formats and repackaged in book versions such as novelisations, film companion titles and tie-in editions. Occasionally the process works in both directions, sometimes simultaneously. In their enthusiasm for acquiring publishing houses, media multinationals are primarily in search of intellectual property in the form of copyright- and trademark-protected content. Once converted into the digital media industries' common binary language, such content becomes repurposable in any of the diverse media plat- forms controlled by the conglomerate.' (Introduction 126)