BOOKS

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Books were the first mass medium and are, in many ways, the most personal. They inform and entertain. They are repositories of our pasts and agents of personal development and social change. Like all media, they mirror the culture.

A Short History of Books

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Books in Colonial North America

The earliest colonist came to America primary for two reasons – to escape religious persecution and to find economic opportunities unavailable to them in Europe. Most of the books they carried to them to the New World were religiously oriented. Moreover, they brought very few books at all.

There were other reasons early settlers did not find books central to their lives. One was the simple fight for survival. In the brutal and hostile land to which they had come, leisure for reading books was a luxury for which they had little time. In addition, books and reading were regarded as symbols of wealth and status and therefore not priorities for people who considered themselves to be pioneers, servants of the lord, or anti-English colonists.

The first printing press arrived on North America shores in 1683, only 18 years after the Plymouth Rock landing. It was operated by a company called Cambridge Press. Printing was limited to religious and government documents. The first book printed in the Colonies appeared in 1644 – The Whole Booke of Psalms, sometimes referred to as the Bay Psalm Book.

The Early Book Industry

After the War of Independence, printing became more central to political, intellectual, and cultural life in major cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. To survive financially, printers also operated as booksellers, book publishers, and sometimes as postmasters who sold stationery and even groceries. A coffee house or tavern often was attached to the print shop.

The era was alive with political change, and printer/bookshop became clearinghouse for the collection, exchange and dissemination of information.

Books and Their Audiences

Saturday, January 3, 2009

The Cultural Value of the Book

The book industry is bound by many of the same financial and industrial pressures that constrain other media, but books, more than others, are in a position to transcend those constraints.In Fahrenheit 451 Montag’s boss, Captain Beatty, explains why all books must be burned. ‘Once,” he tells his troubled subordinate, “books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths” (Bradbury,1981). Bradbury’s firemen of the future destroy books precisely because they are different. It is their difference from other mass media that makes books unique in our culture. Although all media serve the following cultural functions to some degrees (for example, people use self-help videos for personal development and popular music is sometimes an agent of social change0, books traditionally have been seen a s powerful cultural force for these reasons:

• Books are agents of social and cultural change
• Books are important cultural repository.
• Books are windows of the past.
• Books are important sources of personal development
• Books are wonderful sources of entertainment, escape and personal reflection.
• The purchase and reading of a book is a much more individual, personal activity than consuming advertiser-supported (television, radio, newspaper, and magazines) or heavily promoted ( popular music and movies) media.

Scope and Nature of Book Industry

Friday, January 2, 2009

Categories of Books

• Book club editions are sold and distributed by books clubs.
• El-hi are textbook produced for elementary and high schools.
• Higher education are textbooks produced colleges and universities.
• Mail order books , such as those advertised on television by Time-life Books, are delivered by mail and usually are specialized series or elaborately bound special editions of classic novels.
• Mass market paperbacks are typically published only as paperbacks and are designed to appeal to a broad readership; many romance novels, diet books, and self-help books are in this category.
• Professional books are reference and educational volumes designed specifically for professional such as doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientist, and managers.
• Religious books are volumes such as Bibles, catechisms, and hymnals.
• Standardized tests are guide and practice books designed to prepare readers for various examination such a s the SAT or the Bar exam.
• Subscription reference books are publications such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, atlases, and dictionaries bought directly from the publishers rather than purchased in a retail setting.
• Trade books can be hard – or soft cover and include not only fiction and most non fiction but also cook books, biographies, art books, coffee-table book, and how-to books.
• University press books come from publishing houses associated with and often underwritten by universities. They typically publish serious non-fiction and scholarly books.

Trends and Convergence in Book Publishing

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Convergence

Convergence is altering almost all aspects of the book industry. Most obviously the Internet is changing the way books are distributed and sold. But this new technology, in the form of e-publishing, the publication of books initially or exclusively online, offers a new way for writers’ idea to be published.

Demand for Profits and Hypercommercialism

The threat from conglomeration is seen in the parent company’s overemphasis on the bottom line - that is, profitability at all costs. Unlike in the days when G. P. Putnam’s sons and the Schuster family actually ran the houses that carried their names, critics fear that now little pride is taken in the content of books and that risk taking (tackling controversial issues, experimenting with new styles, finding and nurturing new authors is becoming rarer and rarer.

Growth of Small Presses

The overcommercialization of the book industry is mitigated somewhat by the rise in the number of smaller publishing houses. Although these smaller operations are large in number, they account for a very small proportion of books sold. Nonetheless, as recently as 7 years ago there were 20,000 U. S. book publishers. Today , they are more than 78,000, the vast majority being “small presses”. They cannot compete in the block buster world. By definition alternative, they specialize in specific areas such as the environment, feminism, gay issues, and how-to.