Investigating the Challenges of Iran's Publishing:Propose economic indicators and innovation

This article examines the economic conditions of publishing books in Iran. The book as one of the most important cultural goods in comparison with other cultural industries has a fairly good capacity to generate income and employment. In this research, firstly, using the value chain approach, the economic conditions of the book publishing are explained. Then, using the grounded method and utilizing economic indicators, the challenges of this area have been identified. According to studies and surveys conducted in this study, real household expenditures on books have been decreasing since 2013. Examples include imbalances in the share of publishing chain actors, the inadequate distribution of distributors across the country, the inappropriateness of the number of bookstores with the number of publishers, the weakness of reading culture and the educational system, and the domination of the new media on people's lives are considered to be challenging. In contrast, effective policy-making with the use of economic indicators and actions such as updating the rules in this area and the use of innovations such as printing on demand, online sales, and audiobooks in many ways can help to cope with the challenges.