Mass Media in a Changing World

Third Edition

George Rodman
Brooklyn College of CUNY

HISTORY
INDUSTRY
CONTROVERSIES

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Chapter 3

BOOKS: The Durable Medium

Chapter Outline
History
Industry
Controversies

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 A Brief History of Books
Early Forms
 The earliest paper was invented around 3000 BC. It
was made from papyrus, a reed that grew in
ancient Egypt alongside the Nile.
 Papyrus gave way to parchment, which was made
from dried animal skins. Parchment was extremely
durable, which is why some ancient books survived
until modern times.

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 A Brief History of Books
Early Forms
 The first book to resemble today’s familiar form was
produced on parchment by the Romans in the first
century AD, called a codex.
 Around the time of the ancient Greeks several Asian
cultures, including the Chinese, the Koreans, and the
Japanese, were fashioning books printed on rice
paper with carved, reusable wooden blocks.

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 A Brief History of Books
The Printing Revolution
 Johannes Gutenberg came up with idea of moveable
metal type. His invention was one of the prototypes
of mass production and sparked a revolution.
 Printing changed the world from one of oral
culture to literature culture.
 This was an example of technological
determinism.

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 A Brief History of Books
The Book In America
 In the 1530s the Spanish established the first press
in the Americas, in Mexico City. They produced
texts for teaching Spanish to the Indians.
 Many early colonial publishers were escaping
repression in England, where the king carefully
controlled any type of publication.
 Parchment gave way to paper made from cotton and
linen fibers.
 To this day, the best papers still have a certain
amount of cotton or linen fiber, referred to as rag
content.

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 A Brief History of Books
 Most colonial printers also ran bookstores. This
was an early example of the vertical integration.
 These combination printer’s shops and bookstores
became meeting places and educational centers.
 The Library Company of Philadelphia was founded
in 1731 by printer Benjamin Franklin and some of
his associates. It was the first public library open to
the public.

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 A Brief History of Books
Universal Education
 In 1642 Massachusetts became the first colony to
pass a law requiring that every child be taught to
read.
 Universal education became law in the United States
in the 1820s.
 McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers, first published in
1836, used pictures to reinforce vocabulary. There
were more than 120 million copies in print by the
end of the 1800s.

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 A Brief History of Books
The Industrial Revolution
 Machine-made paper was produced from
inexpensive wood pulp instead of cotton and linen
fiber.
 Publishers tried to disguise books as both
newspaper and magazines to take advantage of
lower postage rates.
 In 1914 Congress established a special postal
“book rate” because it realized that the distribution
of books was good for the country.

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 A Brief History of Books
Books and Slavery
 The American publishing industry grew after the
Civil War.
 By the 1920s, publishing was a large profitable
business.
 The Book-of-the-Month Club was formed in 1926,
followed by the Literary Guild in 1927.

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 A Brief History of Books
Paperback Books
 Early paperbacks include Dime and Pulp novels
 In 1939 mass-market paperbacks were introduced
by Pocket Books.
 In an effort to keep cots down, paperback
publishers often printed works in the public
domain (works on which the copyright has already
expired).

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 A Brief History of Books
Paperback Books
 The 1950s saw a boom in male-oriented mysteries,
Westerns, and thrillers.
 In the 1960s, Harlequin, marketed romance novels
with a formula of “Girl meets boy, loses boy, gets
boy back and they live happily ever after.”
 In the 1970s American publishers introduced the
trade paperback which had a heavier cover and
was made from better quality paper.

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 A Brief History of Books
Conglomeration and Globalization
 By the 1960s conglomerates in the United States
and overseas became interested in American
publishers.
 By 2008 four of the five companies that dominated
American book publishing were foreign owned.

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 Top Publishers of U.S. Books

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 A Brief History of Books
New Forms of the Book
 Audiobooks originated for people with vision
problems but have caught on with commuters,
runners and others.
 E-books exist as digital files and are usually
downloaded from the Internet. They can be read
with various e-book reading hardware.
 E-books have the potential to change the medium.
For example, hypertext fiction is interactive and
allows the reader to change the plot as the book is
read.

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 A Brief History of Books
Technical Schematic Diagram of a Traditional
Book

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
Types of Books
 Trade books account for largest share of books
sold. Trade books are fiction and nonfiction that are
sold to the general public.
 Educational books include textbooks for
elementary, secondary, college, and vocational
schools. Many believe that educational books will
be the great growth industry of 21st century
publishing.

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
 Reference books such as encyclopedias,
dictionaries, atlases, or almanacs used to look up
facts and information.
 Professional books contain information needed for
specialized occupations including law, business,
medicine, and engineering.
 The specialty classification includes religious
books, mementos such as high school and college
yearbooks, and anthologies of cartoons and comics
(although comic books are categorized as
magazines).

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 Types of Books

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 Milestones in Book Publishing timeline

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 Players in the Book Industry

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
The Players
 There are probably less than 200 full-time
professional authors of books. Most authors teach,
work for newspapers or magazines, or are
celebrities.
 Noncelebrities who want to become authors
generally establish their credentials by writing
newspaper or magazine articles for nonfiction, and
short stories for fiction.
 Authors write under contract or on spec; which
means finishing a book without a publisher’s
commitment to publish it.

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
 A contract usually involves an advance against
royalties. Royalties are a share of the net amount
the publisher receives.
 Authors like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling
became celebrities because of their writing.
 Publishers often sign celebrities from film,
television, and sports to multimillion-dollar
contracts and then hire ghostwriters or
collaborators to actually write the book.

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
 An acquisition editor acquires books to be
published.
 A developmental editor works with the author,
going over each chapter and suggesting changes,
new directions, things to add, and things to cut.
 When the manuscript is complete it goes to the
copy editor for last minute polishing.

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
 Publishers usually specialize in the types of books
they produce, such as trade, educational, reference,
professional or specialty publications.
 Numerous small independent book companies
target particular minority audiences.
 University presses publish mostly academic
books, especially original research by college
professors.
 A small press is a publisher with a few employees
and minimal facilities.

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
 The publisher is also concerned with promotion of
the finished book.
 They also decide what media the book should be
advertised in and what approach that advertising
should take.
 Utilize several promotional methods:
Jacket blurbs
Magazine and newspaper reviews
Excerpts
Book tours

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
The Bookseller
 Barnes & Noble and Borders account for more
than 25 percent of book sales.
 Megastores feature around 100,000 book titles,
live readings by authors, activities for children,
coffee bars and numerous racks of magazines and
out-of-town newspapers.
 Independent bookstores are not owned by a
chain and are not part of a larger company.

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
 Amazon.com is the leading bookstore in
cyberspace.
 Amazon developed the “Bookmatcher” database
program which recommends books based on a
customer’s other preferences.
 Other online booksellers include Barnes & Noble,
Alibris, and more than 250 independent and
specialty sites.

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Understanding Today’s Book Publishing Industry
Types of Readers
 Readers determine what is published.
 Bibliophiles are book lovers who consume 50 or
more books a year.
 Casual readers enjoy reading but only read a few
books a year.
 Required readers only read for work or studies.
 Illiterates never learned how to read.
 Aliterates are those who can read but don’t.

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 Most Frequently Banned Books

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 Controversies
Book Censorship
 The First Amendment restricts government
interference with free speech, so any act of
government censorship tends to be a serious issue.
 James Joyce’s Ulysses was banned by the U.S.
government from 1920 until 1933 because of its
microscopic examination of the sex life of its main
characters. Today many consider it to be the best
novel ever written.
 Censorship by public schools and libraries has
been extremely controversial.

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 Controversies
Challenging a book usually provides publicity
that stimulates sales.
Book censorship around the world is usually far
stricter than in the U.S.
In 1989 Iran issued a death sentence for Salman
Rushdie, author of Satanic Verses.
Recent travelers to Vietnam have had travel
guides confiscated because they referred to
Vietnam’s 1978 invasion of Cambodia as an
“invasion.”
Censorship can protect children from
pornography, obscenity, and writers who
advocate violence.
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 Controversies
The Blockbuster Syndrome
 A Blockbuster refers to all types of huge events,
especially in terms of media products.
 Today’s obsession with publishing blockbusters
controls the economics of the industry.
 Critics contend that the huge advances paid for
potential blockbusters leave little money for
publishing more challenging or literary works.
 Midlist authors write books that have literary merit
but are not obvious blockbusters.
 A number of blockbuster books have turned out to
be hoaxes or have been plagiarized works.

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 Controversies
The Blockbuster Syndrome
 The quest for blockbusters has led to “books by
crooks.”
 Another problem of the phenomenon is a decline in
quality, particularly in accuracy in works of
nonfiction.
 Also, a number of books turn out to be hoaxes or
plagiarized works.

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