Author Names As Textbook Brands: A Consumer Behaviour Perspective

Abstract

In 2022, educational books generated a revenue of approximately USD 30.76 billion, globally. Companies in educational publishing largely run on a B2B model focused on the faculty and librarians of academic institutions. This creates limited selling opportunities and high competition. University students often choose their own learning materials; therefore, their behaviour in this aspect must be understood. Authors are recognised as ‘human brands’ in fiction and non-fiction publishing; however, this is the first study on their role as brands in educational publishing. Students from 3 reputed educational institutions were surveyed to understand the unaided recall and aided recognition (attachment) of author names vis-a-vis those of book titles and publisher names. Interestingly, recall was the highest for author names, whereas attachment was the highest towards book titles (p<0.001). Furthermore, the attachment towards book titles and author names showed strong positive correlation for Indian authors (correlation coefficient = 0.8421). This dependence on author names for differentiation and trust represents a substantial threat for educational publishers, manifesting as poor adoption of books by new authors, mobility of authors between publishers, bias towards books with certain author names, and lack of differentiability between generic titles. This paper explores these threats from a consumer behaviour perspective and suggests business strategies for publishers to stand out in a saturated market. It also argues for a shift from the largely B2B model to a more B2C approach in educational publishing.