Resumen de Is an image worth a thousand words? net representations of the book industry

María Lluïsa Gea Valor

• This study focuses on the book industry homepage, a digital genre which has emerged as a result of the many multimedia and technical capabilities of the online system. Traditionally, publishing firms have made use of catalogues, leaflets and brochures for information and self-promotion. With the advent of the Internet, however, these traditional methods have been gradually transferred to the digital context, which propitiates the evolution of existing genres and the emergence of new ones, the so-called cybergenres. By means of the homepage, publishing companies represent themselves and project their image on the new computer environment using a wide range of devices, such as icons, animated and non-animated images, and links, which make up the visual rhetoric of the genre. Nonetheless, the verbal element still plays a crucial role in the realisation of the promotional purpose of the genre, especially in the company¿s profile section.