WORDS AND PICTURES

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Consider these descriptions of three different events:

Now guess what they describe: Movie star appearances? Blockbuster film premieres? A concert from the biggest band in the world? In fact, none of these answers are correct. The huge crowds of mostly teenage girls were there for book authors.

In a world where authors generally aren’t visible celebrities, authors of young-adult (YA) books have become big attractions for live events. The descriptions refer to, in order, (1) a 2015 appearance by Paper Towns book author John Green (who, to be fair, did have two actors from the film version of the book with him, as well as the director, screenwriter, and composer); (2) a 2014 appearance by Divergent trilogy author Veronica Roth; and (3) a 2014 solo appearance by John Green, just prior to the film version release of his book The Fault in Our Stars.

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All of the author appearances were at BookCon, a fan event inspired by the annual comic conventions and trade shows around the world. BookCon was launched in 2014 to highlight “where storytelling and pop culture collide” as part of the otherwise staid BookExpo America, the largest book industry trade show in North America.2

As it turns out, storytelling and pop culture tend to collide frequently in the flourishing young-adult book segment of the publishing industry. Think of some of the biggest film franchises in recent years: Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Divergent.

John Green’s books aren’t a series, but Hollywood has noticed that they connect with a lot of teens, particularly young women. The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns have both been made into successful films, and his first book, the award-winning Looking for Alaska (2005), is in production as a movie, too. Green has experienced a downside to having so many exuberant fans, particularly as movie studios buy the rights to his books and begin to make their own choices about casting. In a May 19, 2015, Twitter message (as Looking for Alaska was reported to be casting), he wrote, “I. Do. Not. Cast. Movie. Adaptations. Of. My. Books. I am not a casting director. Please stop threatening to kill me.” Green followed with another tweet: “If I could cast the Looking for Alaska movie, @amyschumer would play every character, Nutty Professor–style. But I don’t make the decisions.”

As for what makes a book a “young-adult” book, YA author Seth Fishman argues, “YA really just means a teen protagonist. Oftentimes we see first person, or settings based on ‘reality’ (high school, death match arenas) but just as often we see abnormal (high school with vampires, death match arenas with vampires). In other words, just like adult books.”3

Young-adult books are now leading the book industry’s best-seller lists. Of the six print books to sell more than one million copies in the United States in 2014, four of them were young-adult books, led by The Fault in Our Stars and Veronica Roth’s series installations: Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant.4 The success of YA literature in the industry led one publishing company to recently form a new division to release classic YA books from the 1930s through the 1980s to new generations of readers.5 There is a certain irony to young-adult books being the biggest sellers. As a writer for the Huffington Post noted, “Young people are often criticized for their supposed short attention span and general fickle-mindedness—and yet YA literature is one of the most buoyant segments in publishing.”6 Like all mass media, the book-publishing world is undergoing digital changes, but its ability to attract and obsess young audiences is a reminder that books can be as powerful as ever.

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IN THE 1950s AND 1960s, cultural forecasters thought that the popularity of television might spell the demise of a healthy book industry, just as they thought television would replace the movie, sound recording, radio, newspaper, and magazine industries. Obviously, this did not happen. In 1950, more than 11,000 new book titles were introduced, and by 2013, publishers were producing over seventeen times that number—more than 192,000 titles per year (see Table 10.1). Despite the absorption of small publishing houses by big media corporations, thousands of publishers—mostly small independents—issue at least one title a year in the United States alone.

Our oldest mass medium is also still our most influential and diverse one. The portability and compactness of books make them the preferred medium in many situations (e.g., relaxing at the beach, resting in bed, traveling on buses or commuter trains), and books are still the main repository of history and everyday experience, passing along stories, knowledge, and wisdom from generation to generation.

In this chapter, we consider the long and significant relationship between books and culture. We will:

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As you read through this chapter, think about the pivotal role books have played in your own life. What are your earliest recollections of reading? Is there a specific book that considerably influenced the way you think? How do you discover new books? Do you envision yourself reading more books on a phone or tablet in the future? Or do you prefer holding a paper copy and leafing through the pages? For more questions to help you understand the role of books in our lives, see “Questioning the Media” in the Chapter Review.