Blog #8

·       Why was the printing press such an important and revolutionary invention?

Between 1453 and 1456, in Germany, Gutenberg used the principles of movable type to develop a mechanical printing press, which he adapted from the design of wine presses. Gutenberg’s staff of printers produced the first so-called modern books, including two hundred copies of a Latin Bible, twenty-one copies of which still exist. The Gutenberg Bible required six presses, many printers, and several months to produce, it was printed on a fine calfskin-based parchment called vellum. In the late 1400s and early 1500s, the printing press spread rapidly across Europe. Canterbury Tales by Chaucer became the first English work to be printed in book form. The social and cultural transformations ushered in by the spread of printing presses and books cannot be overestimated. When people could learn for themselves by using maps, dictionaries, Bibles, and the writings of others, they could differentiate themselves as individuals; their social identities were no longer solely dependent on what their leaders told them or on the habits of their families, communities, or social class. The technology of the printing press permitted information and knowledge to spread outside local jurisdictions.

·       What has undermined the sales of printed and CD encyclopedias?

The sales of printed and CD encyclopedias were undermined by Encyclopedia Britannica, Encarta and The World Book Encyclopedia, which are now the leading online and CD-based encyclopedias. There is struggle today as young researchers are increasingly relying on search engines such as Google and Wikipedia.

·       What is the relationship between the book and movie industries?

Most authors are professional writers, the book industry also reaches out to famous media figures, who may pen a best-selling book or a commercial failure. Other ways publishers attempt to ensure popular success involve acquiring the rights to license popular film and television programs or experimenting with formats like audio and e-books. The two major facets in the relationship among books, television and film are how TV can help sell books and how books serve as ideas for TV shows and movies. With TV exposure, books by or about talk-show hosts, actors, and politicians such as Stephen Colbert, Julia Andrews, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton sell millions of copes-enormous sales in a business where 100,000 in sales constitutes remarkable success. One of the most influential forces in promoting books on TV was Oprah Winfrey. The film industry gets many of its story ideas from books, which results in enormous movie rights revenues for the book industry and its authors. The most profitable movie successes for the book industry in recent years emerged from fantasy works. For example, JK Rolwings best-selling Harry Potter books have become hugely popular movies. Books also inspired popular television programs, including Game of Thrones on HBO, Dexter on Showtime, etc. The television shows boosted the sales of the original books.

·       Why did the Kindle succeed in the e-book market where other devices had failed?

RCA and Sony, early portable reading devices, in the 1990s were criticized for being too heavy, too expensive, or too difficult to read, while their e-book titles were scarce and had little cost advantage over full-price hardcover books. In 2007, Amazon.com, the largest online bookseller, developed an e-reader (the Kindle) and an e-book store that seemed inspired by Apple’s music industry-changing iPod and iTunes. The first Kindle had an easy-on-the-eyes electronic paper display, held more than two hundred books, and did something no other device could do before: wire-lessly download e-books from Amazon’s online bookstore. Kindle devices are the best-selling products ever on Amazon. Apps have transformed the iPod Touch, iPhone, and other smartphones into e-readers. E-books, by 2012, became the best-selling adult fiction book format in the United States, accounting for 15 percent of all books sold. Projections indicate that the figure could increase to 50 percent of the market by 2015. As the market grows rapidly, several companies are vying to be the biggest seller of e-books.

·       What are the major issues in the debate over digitizing millions of books for Web search engines?

The major issues in the debate over digitizing millions of books for Web search engines include the digitizing millions of copyrighted books without permission. Also there was having too much power to profit over digitizing these books. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers initially sued Google for digitizing copyrighted books without permission. Google argued that displaying only a limited portion of the books was legal under “fair use” rules. A federal court struck down the agreement in 2011, arguing that it gave Google too much power to profit from millions of books for which Google didn’t first obtain copyright permission.

·       What's the difference between a book that is challenged and one that is banned?

As societies discovered the power associated with knowledge and the printed word, books were subjected to a variety of censors. Imposed by various rulers and groups intent on maintaining their authority, the censorship of books often prevented people from learning about the rituals and moral standards of other cultures. Political censors sought to banish “dangerous” books that promoted radical ideas or challenged conventional authority. Some versions of the Bible, Karl Marx’s Das Kapital, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses have all been banned at one time or another. One of the triumphs of the Internet is that it allows the digital passage of banned books into nations where printed versions have been outlawed. The American library Association compiles a list of the most challenged books in the United States. A book challenge is a formal complaint to have a book removed from a public or school library’s collection. Common reasons for challenges include sexually explicit passages, offensive language, occult themes, violence, homosexual themes, promotion of a religious viewpoint, nudity, and racism. Some of the most challenged books of the past decade include I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

·       What was the impact of the growth of book superstores on the rest of the bookstore industry?

The steady growth of book publishing has been relatively modest. Total revenues went from $9 billion to about $27.9 billion, in the mid-1980s to 2011. The concept of who or what constitutes a publisher varies widely within the industry. A publisher may be a large company that is a subsidiary of a global media conglomerate and occupies an entire office building, or a one-person home office operation using a laptop computer. Since the 1960s and 1970s when CBS acquired Holt, Rinehart and Winston; Popular Library; and Fawcett-mergers and consolidations have driven the book industry. In 1998, Bertelsmann shook up the book industry by adding Random House, the largest U.S. book publisher, to its fold. With this $1.4 billion purchase, Bertelsmann gained control of about one-third of the U.S. trade book market and became the world’s largest publisher of English-language books. Simon and Schuster, Lagadere, HaperCollins and Macmillan are the five largest trade book publishers in the United States. From a corporate viewpoint executives have argued that large companies can financially support a number of smaller firms or imprints while allowing their editorial ideas to remain independent from the parent corporation. Book publishing continues to produce volumes on an enormous range of topics.

·       What are the concerns over Amazon's powerful role in determining book pricing and having its own publishing divisions?

Amazon.com is the trailblazer, it was established in 1995 by then-thirty year old Jeff Bezos, who left Wall Street to start a Web-based business. Jeff Bezos realized books were an untapped and ideal market for the Internet, with more than 3 million publications in print and plenty of distributors to fulfill orders. Amazon’s bigger objective for the book industry was to transform the entire industry itself, from one based on bound paper volumes to digital files. The Kindle introduction in 2007 made Amazon the fastest book delivery system in the world. Amazon quickly grew to control 90 percent of the e-book market, which it used as leverage to force book publishers to comply with their low prices or risk getting dropped from Amazon’s bookstore. Amazon’s price slashing resulted in most of the major trade book publishing corporations endorsing Apple’s agency-mode, pricing in which the publishers set the book prices and the digital bookseller gets a 30-percent commission. By 2012, Amazon’s share of the e-book market dropped from about 90 percent to about 60 percent. The booksellers responded that government investigators should have been more concerned about Amazon, which has grown to be one of the most powerful players in the publishing industry. A concern to publishers is that Amazon has been expanding into the field of traditional publishers with the establishment of Amazon publishing, which has grown rapidly since 2009. A publishing arm that can sign authors to book contracts, the Amazon store’s distribution, and millions of Kindle devices in the hands of readers.

·       What is Andrew Carnegie's legacy in regard to libraries in the United States and elsewhere?

Large book conglomerates and superstores dominate the book industry; there are still alternative options for both publishing and selling books. An alternative idea is to make books freely available to everyone; this idea is not a new one. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, industrialist Andrew Carnegie used millions of dollars from his vast steel fortune to build more than twenty-five hundred public libraries in the United States, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Andrew Carnegie believed that libraries created great learning opportunities for citizens, and especially for immigrants like himself. Public libraries may be some of the best venues for alternative voices-where a myriad of ideas exist side by side.