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7. Denver, Colorado
8. San Francisco, California
9. Boston, Massachusetts
10. St. Louis, Missouri
(See http://hosted.ccsu.edu/app/?news=1119&data.)
• People in the Pacific Coast states buy more books than anyone else. They make up 15
percent of the U.S. population but buy 19 percent of books sold.
• What are the three most important factors that influence book buying in the United States?
1. An appealing dust jacket, which influences 20 percent of all book purchases
2. Price
3. A glowing book review
MEDIA LITERACY DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES
THE COST OF COLLEGE TEXTBOOKS
This think-pair-share exercise focuses on the publishing and sales of college and university
textbooks.
1. Think. On your own, write down:
• How much money you spent this semester on textbooks and the cost of each book
• How much money you got back if you returned any books last semester
• What your choices are for purchasing textbooks
2. Pair. With a partner, discuss your observations, and consider these questions: Which types of
books seem most expensive? Why do they cost so much? What do you typically do with
textbooks at the end of a semester—keep them or sell them—and why? Who do you think is
responsible for pricing books? Who do you think reaps the most profit from textbooks?
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(Consider showing the graphic, “Where the New Textbook Dollar Goes,” which is available at:
https://www.nacs.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=avjJ9Z83RzU%3D&tabid=167&mid=581.)
3. Share. As a class, consider the college textbook publishing business. If a particular book is
more expensive than others, are you more or less likely to buy it? Should professors tie
lectures closely to the texts, or should the required reading be done independently by the
student? What are some of the factors in the production and distribution of textbooks that
account for their cost? Do students prefer digital or paper textbooks? Why?
(You might want to refer to National Association of College Stores research, which shows
student preferences for print textbooks dropping from approximately 75 percent in 2010 and
2011 to only 40 percent in 2015. See http://www.nacs.org/research/studentwatchfindings.aspx.)
BOOKS AND YOU
Pre-Exercise Question: What have been the most important books in your life, and why?
This Critical Process exercise is designed to re-evaluate the significance of books in people’s
lives, especially in an era of electronic media. It is a variation of the think-pair-share discussion
strategy explained in the Teaching Philosophy section in the beginning of this manual. Divide
the class into teams of two or three. Give students two to three minutes to think independently
about the questions, five to ten minutes to share their experiences with their teams, and about
fifteen minutes to compare and discuss the issues with the entire class.
1. Description. Consider the books that have made a difference in your life. What kind of books
are they (e.g., novels, reference books, religious books, children’s books, comic books)?
How did you access these books? Were they already in your home? Did you go to the
library? Did you get them as gifts, or did you buy them at a bookstore? What were your early
experiences with school libraries, public libraries, and bookstores? What role do books
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currently play in your life? Have you kept many of the books that are important to you? Why
or why not?
2. Analysis. Does your group or class share certain patterns of experience around your favorite
books? Are these patterns related to your age at the time, your gender, where you live, or the
way you were raised to think about books?
3. Interpretation. Consider your book experiences in relation to the decade in which you started
reading and the other media and activities battling for your attention. Did you generally have
negative or positive experiences connected to books and reading? Do you have certain
coming-of-age experiences connected to books? Why or why not?
4. Evaluation. After considering your book experiences, what do you think is the role of books
in an age of electronic media?
5. Engagement. Create an annotated list of the class’s favorite books, and pass it around. Steer
students to the college library’s reading room.
BOOK READING
Answer each of the following questions in a few sentences or short paragraph(s):
1. Do you read books outside the school setting? If so, what books do you tend to read, and
why? (If you don’t read books, reflect on why you choose not to.)
2. Think about reading as a practice. When do you read (time of day/time of year)? Where do
you read? (In what types of locations/environments/situations do you pick up a book?) If you
don’t read books regularly, can you pinpoint at what point you stopped reading? (Do you
ever want to pick up a book now but just don’t get around to it?) What type of reader are
you? (Do you read many books at once? Do you read sporadically?)
3. What influences (or what would influence) you to read a particular book?
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4. In your opinion, what do books offer that TV or movies don’t? What place do books have in
our fast-paced, visual culture?
—Developed by Karen Pitcher, University of Iowa
BANNED BOOKS
Have students read or browse the following articles and Web sites and then discuss how the First
Amendment applies to access to books:
• “Slaughterhouse-Five ban should make school board blush”
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/slaughterhouse-five-ban-should-make-school-board-
blush/
• Banned & Challenged Books: http://www.ala.org/bbooks and http://www.tiki-
toki.com/timeline/entry/51787/Banned-Books-Week-Celebrating-30-Years-of-Liberating-
Literature/#vars!date=2012-07-15_07:34:50!
• Banned Books Week (usually in late September): http://www.bannedbooksweek.org
• “Teaching Huck Finn: A Letter to Friends’ Central School:”
http://ncac.org/incident/teaching-huck-fmn-a-letter-to-friends-central-school
• Banned & Challenged Comics: http://cbldf.org/banned-comic/banned-challenged-comics
HOW DO YOU FIND OUT ABOUT BOOKS?
This Critical Process exercise examines how people discover books.
Pre-Exercise Questions: Every year, the book industry publishes more than 100,000 titles in
North America. Some could be life changing, inspiring, or unbelievably fascinating, but you
might never know about them because somehow the book industry failed to reach you. How do
you discover books? And if you knew about more great reading material, would you read more
often?
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1. Description. Interview ten of your friends about their relationship with books. Ask them (1)
whether they read books at all, and why or why not; (2) how they choose the books they
read; (3) what books were transformative for them and whether they would read more books
if they knew about recommended titles; and (4) if viewing a particular movie or TV show has
transformed them as much as a book has.
2. Analysis. What important patterns emerge? For example, how many of your participants said
they choose their books by “word of mouth”? How many browse the shelves of libraries or
bookstores, actively seek out books on the Internet by reading recommended listings
(perhaps on Amazon), participate in a book club or reading group, or never read books at all?
Discuss the most significant patterns.
3. Interpretation. What can you glean from this information? Is it difficult to learn about book
titles you’d be interested in reading? Why do some people read more than others?
4. Evaluation. Do you think the publishing industry is doing a good job educating U.S. citizens
about books? How does publicity for books compare with other mass media products (films,
television, recordings)? What are the advantages and disadvantages of publicizing a book?
Discuss.
5. Engagement. One of the best places to find out about past and present titles is the Barnes &
Noble Review, available at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/review. Here you can access
titles and reviews by subject, store recommendations, award winners, great new writers (and
its archive), various bestseller lists, and so on. You may also want to start reading the New
York Times Book Review (http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html) or the London
Review of Books (http://www.lrb.co.uk). Choose some titles. Start a book club. Read.
THE BIG BOOK BUSINESS
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Pre-Exercise Question: What are some recent books that are connected to other media content or
media personalities? Think of all the possibilities across many media, including television, film,
radio, newspapers, comics, and the recording industry.
This Critical Process exercise analyzes the sometimes uncomfortable relationship between
book publishing and the media business, and it begins with the weekly best-seller lists in the New
York Times Book Review. You can also check http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-
books/overview.html.
1. Description. Check the current best-seller and paperback best-seller lists, and make a list of
the titles. Students can work in groups that will analyze several fiction or nonfiction titles or
as individuals responsible for just one or a few titles.
2. Analysis. Determine the parent corporation of the book: Is it a multinational media
conglomerate or an independent? Some of the largest conglomerates are Bertelsmann SE
(Random House, Ballantine Bantam Dell, Doubleday, Anchor, Delacorte, Broadway Books,
Penguin, etc.), News Corp. (HarperCollins, William Morrow, Avon, Amistad, etc.), Pearson
PLC (Viking, Dutton, Pearson, Razorbill, etc.), Hachette Livre (Little, Brown and Company;
Grand Central Publishing; Orbit), CBS (Simon & Schuster, Scribner, Touchstone, Free Press,
Pocket Books, etc.), and Macmillan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Hill & Wang; Bedford/St.
Martin’s; Henry Holt; etc.).
3. Interpretation. Search LexisNexis, the National Newspaper Index, or other sources for news
articles about these books, their authors, the ways in which the books were promoted, and the
sales estimates for the books. (Some useful Web sites are http://www.publishersweekly.com
and http://www.bookwire.com.) Research the history of the book’s content. Is the book
connected to a known entity, such as a current movie, comic strip, magazine article, or
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television show? In regard to synergy, are these other media versions of the same content
produced by subsidiaries of the same company? Were subsidiaries also used for reviews or
promotion of the book (e.g., a Wall Street Journal magazine review of a HarperCollins
book)? Did the subsidiary connection seem impartial or excessively promotional?
4. Evaluation. Finally, evaluate the role of big publishing in the book industry. Is it good to
bring book ideas and stories to a wider audience through the synergy of big companies? Is
there a sufficient variety of genres and ideas in the best-seller lists, or—perhaps owing to
business pressures—is there too much of the same thing?
5. Engagement. Check out local independent bookstores and online book sites such as
IndieBound (http://www.indiebound.org) to keep tabs on what is popular outside the
mainstream.
Option: This exercise can also be an individual research assignment, using current or past New
York Times best-seller lists.
TRACKING RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE BOOK PUBLISHING INDUSTRY: A
SEMESTER-LONG CRITICAL PROCESS EXERCISE AND PAPER
In this exercise students discover the most recent developments in the industry, and they become
familiar with industry trade sources. The paper they produce is due in sections, which
correspond with the steps in the Critical Process.
1. Description. Read industry trade sources to get a sense of the main issues affecting the book
publishing industry. Look at the Web sites of industry trade associations and professional
societies. (Links to Web sites of some industry trade sources are given in the Classroom
Media Sources below.) Take notes on topics that have multiple stories or mentions in the
current year. What issues or developments in the industry have received a lot of recent
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attention, discussion, or commentary in industry sources? (Focus only on information from
the current year—and only from trade sources.) Write a one-page synopsis of the information
you found about current topics in the industry. Cite your sources properly.
2. Analysis. Look for one development or pattern that has received significant attention on trade
sites and from trade journalists in the current year. Choose one specific trend, and write one
or two pages with details about the information you found about that trend. Continue to track
news about your topic as the semester progresses. Cite sources properly.
3. Interpretation. What does the trend mean for the state of the industry? Is it evolving? How?
What does it tell you about media in general at the current time? What might it say about our
culture or our society? Can your information help us interpret the role of the industry in our
lives? Write up your interpretation in a five-page paper. (The first page should be a synopsis
of the trend, with proper citations.) You might not have to provide information from your
sources for the next four pages because this section is your interpretation of the trend. (Save
any ideas you have about whether the trend is “good” or “bad” for the Evaluation step of the
Critical Process.)
4. Evaluation. Is the trend “good” or “bad?” For the industry? society? culture? democracy? us?
What do you think might happen in the future?
5. Engagement. Are there any actions you can take (related to your trend and the industry)?
Possibilities include posting your views on social media, creating a petition, contacting
people in the industry to see what they think of your interpretation and evaluation, or going
to an industry event if any are held nearby. (This step need not be required if students are not
motivated to take action.)
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Note: This exercise works well if each step of the Critical Process is due two weeks after the
prior step is due. Limiting students to only trade sources and only information from the current
year helps keep them on track. Your institution’s librarians should be able to provide students
with information on how to access industry trade sources.
CLASSROOM MEDIA RESOURCES
LAUNCHPAD FOR MEDIA & CULTURE:
launchpadworks.com
Banned Books On Screen: Huck Finn (1993, 1:36 minutes). A brief clip from The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn shows a film adaptation of a commonly banned work of literature.
Based On: Making Books into Movies (2010, 3:25 minutes). David Gale, Tom Perrotta, and
Anne Rice discuss the process of turning a novel into a movie.
Books in the New Millennium (2009, 3.51 minutes). This video features authors, editors, and
bookstore owners discussing the future of the book publishing industry. Featuring Elizabeth
Beier, Richard Campbell, Heather Lyons, and Anne Rice.
Self-Publishing On Screen: 50 Shades of Grey (2015, 0:55 minutes). Watch the trailer for the
film 50 Shades of Grey, a self-published e-book which became a best-selling book trilogy
and later a series of films.
Turning the Page: Books Go Digital (2010, 3:04 minutes). Featuring authors Andre Dubus III,
Junot Diaz, and Kathi Kamen Goldmark, this video looks at how books are going digital and
what that means for our reading experiences.
VIDEOS/DVDS/CDS
Book Industry (1997, 29 minutes). This program provides a detailed look at how trade and
educational/reference books are made, sold, and marketed (part of the Film, TV, and Media
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Today series). Distributed by Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 800-322-8755;
http.//ffh.films.com.
Comics Belong in the Classroom (November 2016, 10:38 minutes). This TEDxManhattanBeach
talk features Gene LuenYang, a writer and illustrator of comic books and graphic novels. He
discusses the potential of comics for helping kids learn.
The History of Print (1997, 30 minutes). This video illustrates the evolution of print culture and
notes print’s influence on cultural changes in Europe and the United States. The program also
evaluates the impact of new technologies on print culture.
Top Trends: What Publishers Should Expect in 2017 (June 2018, 1:00:58). A BookBusiness
Printing Impressions educational webinar. Speakers include representatives of the
Independent Book Publishers Association, the Book Industry Study Group and Keypoint
Intelligence/InfoTrends. Available at https://vimeo.com/271578268.
WEB SITES
American Booksellers Association; http.//www.bookweb.org
American Library Association: http.//www.ala.org
Association of American Publishers: http.//www.publishers.org
Association of American University Presses: http.//www.aaupnet.org
Book Con (convention): http.//www.thebookcon.com
Book Industry Study Group: http.//www.bisg.org
The Bookseller: http.//www.thebookseller.com
BookLife: https://booklife.com/about-us/about-booklife.html (a website from Publishers Weekly
dedicated to indie authors)
Children’s Book Council: http.//www.cbcbooks.org
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Independent Book Publishers Association: http.//www.ibpa-online.org/
International Comic Arts Forum: http.//www.internationalcomicartsforum.org
International Publishers Association: http.//www.internationalpublishers.org
National Association of College Stores: http.//www.nacs.org
New York Times Book Review: http.//www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html
Project Gutenberg: http.//www.gutenberg.net
Publishing Trends: http.//www.publishingtrends.com
Publishers Weekly: http.//www.publishersweekly.com
R. R. Bowker’s Bookwire: www.bookwire.com
Society for Scholarly Publishing: https.//www.sspnet.org
Subtext: http.//www.dawhois.com/www/subtext.net.html
FURTHER READING
Brienza, Casey. Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of
Japanese Comics. London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.
Davis, Kenneth C. Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1984.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. 2 vols. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1980.
Epstein, Jason. Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future. New York: Norton, 2001.
Greco, Albert N. The Economics of the Publishing and Information Industries: The Search for
Yield in a Disintermediated World. New York/London: Routledge, 2015.
Greco, Albert N., Jim Milliot, and Robert Wharton. The Book Publishing Industry. 3rd ed. New
York: Routledge, 2014.
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Greco, Albert N, Clara E. Rodriguez, and Robert M. Wharton. The Culture and Commerce of
Publishing in the 21st Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2007.
Kernan, Alvin. The Death of Literature. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
Tebbel, John. Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of Book Publishing in America.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
___. A History of Book Publishing in the United States. Vol. 1, 1630–1865; vol. 2, 1865–1919;
vol. 3, 1920–1940; vol. 4, 1940–1980. New York: Bowker, 1972–1981.
PART 4
The Business of Mass Media
The digital turn has shifted the locus of power in mass media. For decades, mass media have
been dominated by giant corporations that created the music, television, movies, and publications
we consumed. Now a new digital market has grown up around them, displacing the way
traditional mass media businesses operate, changing how advertising and public relations work,
and breaking down the barriers of entry to start-up media companies. This disruption has
changed the structure of media economics, spawned a new digital ecosystem for advertising and
public relations, and affected democracy by redistributing power for content creators, among
other groups.
