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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic will have a large impact on the publishing industry. This research aims to investigate the influences of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, utilitarian and hedonic motivations on consumer intention to buy books online. It conceptualizes the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as situational influences, which involve the closure of physical bookstores, health risks associated with visiting such stores, online shopping trend and additional marketing efforts from online bookstores during the pandemic. Data were collected from 275 Vietnamese consumers using an online survey. Multivariate data analysis reveals that the COVID-19 pandemic situation has a positive and significant impact on consumer intention toward online book shopping. Furthermore, while utilitarian motivation exerts a strong effect on consumer intention to purchase books online, the relationship between hedonic motivation and online purchase intention is positive but insignificant. These findings would assist key stakeholders such as publishers and online bookstores to improve the quality of their websites as well as develop their marketing campaigns.

Across the humanities and social sciences, scholars increasingly use quantitative methods to study textual data. Considered together, this research represents an extraordinary event in the long history of textuality. More or less all at once, the corpus has emerged as a major genre of cultural and scientific knowledge. In Literary Mathematics, Michael Gavin grapples with this development, describing how quantitative methods for the study of textual data offer powerful tools for historical inquiry and sometimes unexpected perspectives on theoretical issues of concern to literary studies. Student-friendly and accessible, the book advances this argument through case studies drawn from the Early English Books Online corpus. Gavin shows how a copublication network of printers and authors reveals an uncannily accurate picture of historical periodization; that a vector-space semantic model parses historical concepts in incredibly fine detail; and that a geospatial analysis of early modern discourse offers a surprising panoramic glimpse into the period's notion of world geography. Across these case studies, Gavin challenges readers to consider why corpus-based methods work so effectively and asks whether the successes of formal modeling ought to inspire humanists to reconsider fundamental theoretical assumptions about textuality and meaning. As Gavin reveals, by embracing the expressive power of mathematics, scholars can add new dimensions to digital humanities research and find new connections with the social sciences.

Three instructional coaches share more than 200 of the most helpful problem-solving strategies they've used in their decades-long work with teachers, administrators, and coaches. \"The Instructional Coaching Handbook\" is not a new model of coaching. It addresses common hiccups that prevent productive coaching conversations from happening in the first place. From their thousands of annual school visits, the authors recognize that coaches frequently confront similar challenges when helping educators address seven skills and dispositions--and they devote a chapter to each: (1) Efficacy; (2) Equity; (3) Academic instruction; (4) Social-emotional instruction; (5) Openness to feedback; (6) Lesson planning; and (7) Team membership. Each chapter features scores of practical, research-based strategies with a history of success. Mix and match them according to your leadership style, the needs of the student or teacher, and the demands of the curriculum. In addition to implementation stories that show what the strategies look like in a range of classroom settings, this handbook includes effective tools and resources that help guide you through the thorniest of coaching conversations. All you have to do is dive into an appropriate chapter; scan for ideas that match your style, the educators you coach, and your unique context; and start making a difference!

This study aims to assess the effect of online reviews on online book sales performance in the Indian context. A sales rank was used as a proxy measure for sales. The total sample size was 2028 books from the ‘bestseller’ and ‘recent’ book categories on Amazon.in. Cross-sectional analysis and difference-in-difference analysis approaches were adopted for data analysis. The results revealed that online reviews shared by the Indian consumers impact books sales, as the consumers prefer to analyze the books on the basis of available online reviews before making their purchase decision. Overall, the results indicated that reviews had a positive impact on the sales in both book categories.

Leonard Bernstein is a household name. Most know him for his classic musical reworking of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as Broadway's West Side Story. But Bernstein accomplished so much more as a composer, and his body of work is both broad and varied. He composed ballets (Fancy Free, Facsimile, Dybbuk), operas (Trouble in Tahiti, Candide, A Quiet Place), musicals (On the Town, Wonderful Town), film scores (On the Waterfront), symphonies, choral works, chamber music pieces, art songs, and piano works. In Experiencing Leonard Bernstein: A Listener's Companion, Kenneth LaFave guides readers past Bernstein's famously tortured personal problems and into the clarity and balance of his Serenade after Plato's Symposium for Violin and Orchestra, the intense drama of his music for On the Waterfront, the existential cosmography of his three symphonies, and his vibrant works for the musical stage. Perhaps the most famous American classical musician born in the twentieth century, Bernstein divided his time between composing, conducting, writing, and teaching, a busy schedule—especially his conducting of major orchestras—that set his work as composer at a disadvantage. Often generated in short spurts, his work carries an urgency—and even an element of improvisational genius—that he flavored with his eclectic embrace of jazz, folk song, Jewish cantorial music, and innovations in contemporary classical theory. The result is a body of work that is beguilingly melodic, incomparably rhythmic, and irrepressibly individual. Experiencing Leonard Bernstein: A Listener's Companion is the ideal work for any reader seeking to learn how to listen across the spectrum of Bernstein's musical output.

PurposeBy adopting a cross-country analysis, this study aims to investigate how consumers' perception of book covers affects their online book purchases in terms of feelings of delight and perceived value of the book.Design/methodology/approachThe authors tested the hypotheses using a structural equation model using two countries' datasets obtained from 191 Japanese and 207 French consumers.FindingsThe perceived attractiveness of a picture/photo on a book cover can positively influence feelings of delight. Such emotion enhances a book's perceived value, resulting in active online book purchases. Furthermore, when the perceived value of a book is evident, the French are more strongly motivated to purchase books compared to Japanese consumers.Originality/valueBy simultaneously examining emotion and perceived value as an organism, the authors advance the knowledge of the relationship between book covers and online book purchases. In addition, the authors offer evidence that cross-cultural differences (between the French and Japanese) can stimulate different responses to each affective and cognitive internal state, although similar environmental stimuli are provided.

The article explores how the interplay of ideological values and technological capacities have shaped the digital bibliography of British print history. Using a misgendering in the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) as a case study, the article explores how information flows through resources like Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), and Early English Books Online (EEBO), library catalogues, WorldCat, and retail outlets like Amazon. The article argues that as data from the ESTC is reproduced through linked data structures, information is ‘authorized’ far beyond what a single resource would do alone or what its original authors imagined or designed. While feminist, queer, and critical race scholarship has discursively created and revised new histories of textual production, in contrast foundational resources like the ESTC perpetuate old assumptions with unfixed errors and editorial practices that render the who and the why of their metadata choices opaque. The article concludes that radical revision is necessary if we are to disrupt centuries of a white and male norm in British print history. 

The use of digital audio-based learning applications in classrooms is increasing. Thus, instructional technology professionals need to become more skilled in designing and developing these apps. To succeed in the future learning process, students studying instructional technology need to have mastered these skills. This study aims to examine the impact of a specialized platform proposed to cultivate students’ skills in easily designing and producing online educational talking books (online ETBs). To improve the target abilities, we developed a new specialized platform as a web-based system for this investigation that includes several innovative tools and special learning content. The research design used was quasi-experimental. Thirty-two undergraduate students majoring in instructional technology who were in the third grade examined the proposed platform. With the pre-and post-test design, all participants were placed into one group. Three online instruments were used to gather the data: a performance observation card; a product evaluation card; and a usability questionnaire. According to the results, the suggested platform considerably increased the practical skills required to design and create an online ETB. Additionally, the proposed platform positively impacted the production of online ETB products with an acceptable proficiency level across various educational subjects. The customized platform has also proven to be a comfortable learning environment for the participating instructional technology students. This platform may be utilized as an ICT teaching tool to enhance instructional technology departments as it is appropriate for constructing online ETBs in various educational areas without coding barriers.

PurposeThe study explored users' tendency of confirmation bias when processing congenial vs. uncongenial electronic-word-of-mouth (e-WOM) about mystery fictions, a hedonic product category with strong experience and hedonic characters.Design/methodology/approachA two-stage judgment approach was employed where the participants were asked to judge a set of mystery novels twice: one before, and another after they were exposed to positive and negative e-WOM. The first-stage judgment established two favored and two disfavored titles by each participant. They were then asked to read six consumer reviews – three positive and three negative – for each of the four titles. The procedures created four review evaluation situations: two congruent and two incongruent, which allowed the authors to assess the participants' perceptions of congenial and uncongenial reviews and their rating adjustments of the titles. Participants' involvement in mystery novels was also measured to test its moderating effect on confirmation bias.FindingsConfirmation bias in the evaluation of e-WOM was observed and reinforced by the user's involvement in the genre. Congenial reviews were perceived to be significantly more credible, better reflect the intrinsic value of a title and less subjectively motivated than uncongenial reviews. Furthermore, after exposure to equal amount of positive and negative e-WOM, an asymmetrical adjustment of final rating of the titles was observed. A significantly greater downward adjustment was observed for disfavored than favored titles. Stronger positive confirmation bias was also observed in the evaluation of WOM.Research limitations/implicationsPrevious studies on e-WOM have shown conflicting findings on the relative efficacy of positive vs. negative reviews. By introducing the factor of prior attitudes, the study demonstrated that whether WOM is consistent with an individual's prior attitude, rather than the valences of WOM in itself, determines its persuasiveness. Thus, it established the confirmation bias in users' processing of e-WOM. The finding highlights the importance for marketers to establish a positive initial impression, which, as the findings demonstrated, helps alleviate the damages caused by negative WOM.Originality/valueThis is the first study that has ever attempted to study the effect of confirmation bias during the users' processing of e-WOM in an experimental setting. By having the participants judge the books before and after exposure to congenial and uncongenial e-WOM, the authors were able to establish the link between the users' prior commitment to a book and their subsequent judgment of both the titles and the e-WOM.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-01-2020-0026

The book offers an up-to-date and readable introduction to the manifold literary and historical problems of biblical prophecy. Reinhard Gregor Kratz provides the reader with a clear analysis of the development of the institution of prophecy in ancient Israel and Second Temple Judaism. Through a close reading of the prophetic corpus he demonstrates that in biblical tradition we have to distinguish between the historical and the literary prophet. The historical prophet is a representative of ancient Israelite religion while the literary prophet – as presented in the biblical books—is part of the tradition of emerging Judaism. This development from historical representative to literary figure guides the analysis and it becomes clear that the special character of biblical prophecy as encountered in the books of the Bible is the result of a long process of tradition during which older material is reworked, restructured, and applied to new situations. The book takes the distinction between the historical and the literary phenomenon of prophecy seriously and, therefore, will focus primarily on the literary tradition. This tradition will be recognized as such and should not be confused with the historical prophet and his words. After an overview of various models of interpretation of biblical prophecy, Kratz will consider first the broader historical background and the phenomenology of prophecy in the ancient Near East and ancient Israel. Then he moves on to the literary evidence of prophecy in biblical tradition and its historical context, including the earliest commentaries on prophetic books, the Pesharim from Qumran. The study concludes with an appendix that will introduce the reader to the scholarship on the prophets and provide some suggestions for further reading.