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Our oldest mass medium
- Growing in numbers of titles (275,000)
- Large numbers of presses (20,000)
- Conglomerates moving in
- Has met cultural challenges- television, hollywood, newspapers and magazines
- Highly portable and compact
- Main repository of history and everyday experience
- Pass along stories, konwledge and wisdom from generation to generation
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History of Print
- Papyrus circa 2400 BC
- Parchment-treated animal skin, gradually replaced papyrus
- Codex- bound materials
- 1000 CE chinese invention- movable type, paper making technology
- 1453 Gutenberg- printing press, inestimable influence on western culture
- Manuscript culture: Medieval church- illuminated manuscripts, book as reverential artifact, grammar rules developed
- Birth of publishing in the US- The Bay Psalm Book 1640
- Development of popular literature- Ben Franklin imported Pamela 1744
- Paperbacks by mid-1800's
- Dime novels
- Pulp Fiction
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Offset lithography
- Developed in the early 1900's
- Anything you can take a picture of you can print
- Led to computerized typesetting
- Greatly reduced the cost of color and illustrations
- Accelerated book production
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Formation of publishing Houses
- Publishing houses developed in the 1800's with early prestigious publishing houses
- Demand for books grew between 1880-1920
- Helped to assimilate immigrants
- Peak year for new titles was 1910
- Sales sputtered from 1910 until 1950's because of world wars and Great Depression
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Trade Books
- fiction
- other popular writing
- adult and juvenile fiction
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Professional books
- Law
- Business
- Medicine
- Technical-scientific
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Textbooks
- McGuffey Reader mid 1800's
- elementary-high school
- vocational
- college
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Mass market paperbacks
instant books- optical books published quickly after an even occurs
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Reference Books
- Encyclopedia
- dictionaries
- atlases
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University Press titles
scholarly works
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Trends and issues in book publishing
- Influences of TV and film- tv helps sell books (Oprah) and books serve as ideas for TV shows and movies
- Preserving and digitizing books- google library project
- Audio books
- E-books
- Censorship and banned books- the bible, malcolm x, karl marx
- Book challenges- Harry potter series, captain underpants series, forever by judy bloom
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Ownership in Publishing
- Like most mass media, commercial publishing is dominated by a handful of major corporations with ties to international media conglomerates:
- Random house 1.28 billion in revenue
- Penguin group 1.085 billion in revenue
- HarperCollins 840 million in revenue
- Simon&Schuster 730 million in revenue
- Hachette Livre 670 million in revenue
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Publishing business
- Acquisitions editor- identify talent, handle subsidiary rights
- Development editor- handles feedback to author, coordinates outside judges of the work
- Copy editors- problems in writing or length
- Design manager- layout and cover design
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Selling books
- Bookstores: Independents v. Chains
- Chains- Barnes and Noble, Borders
- Indies- Maintain 15% of market share
- Online bookstores
- Amazon.com 1995 leader of online sales
- Barnes and Noble bn.com 1997
- Book clubs and mail order
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Alternate voices
- Despite the book industry being dominated by large book conglomerates and superstores there are still alternative options for both publishing and selling books:
- self-publishing
- e-publishing
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Books and the future of democracy
Besides troubling declines in juvenile reading levels, books and reading have survived the challenge of visual and digital culture. Books also help us to understand ideas and customs beyond our own experiences. If democracy is to work well, we must read.
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