Until fairly recently, books of all kinds took printed form: pages bound together through various devices (such as glue or spiral wire) and enclosed by a cover (cardboard, leather, paper). But with the rise of electronic and digital publishing, book formats have expanded beyond print to include audio books (“books on tape,” now available as CDs or MP3 downloads) and e-books (which are accessed on the Internet and read on a computer or a handheld device). Regardless of the format, however, books are still highly diverse in terms of their subject matter.

Print Books

Today, the publishing industry produces titles that fall into a wide variety of categories—everything from trade books and textbooks to mass market paperbacks and reference books. These categories have been formally defined by various trade organizations, such as the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), and the American Booksellers Association (ABA).

Trade

One of the most lucrative markets in the industry, trade books include hardbound and paperback books aimed at general readers and sold at commercial retail outlets. The industry distinguishes among adult trade, juvenile trade, and comics and graphic novels (which contain pictures rather than type). Adult trade books include hardbound and paperback fiction; current nonfiction and biographies; literary classics; books on hobbies, art, and travel; popular science, technology, and computer publications; self-help books; and cookbooks. Juvenile trade categories range from preschool picture books to young-adult or young-reader books, such as the Dr. Seuss books, the Lemony Snicket series, and the Harry Potter series.

47

Professional

Professional books target various occupational groups, not the general consumer market. This area of publishing capitalizes on the growth of professional specialization that has characterized the U.S. job market, particularly since the 1960s. Traditionally, the industry has subdivided professional books into the areas of law, business, medicine, and technology-science. These books are sold mostly through mail order, the Internet, or sales representatives knowledgeable about the various subject areas.

Textbooks

Textbooks such as McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers have served a nation intent on improving literacy rates and public education and are divided into elementary through high school (el-hi) texts, college texts, and vocational texts. In about half the states in the country, local school districts determine which el-hi textbooks are appropriate for their students. The remaining states, including Texas and California, have statewide adoption policies governing which texts can be used. Unlike el-hi texts, which are subsidized by various states and school districts, college texts are paid for by students (or their parents) and are sold primarily through college bookstores. The increasing cost of textbooks has led some students to trade, resell, or rent textbooks or to download them more cheaply from sites like Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com. For the 2007–08 school year, the average college student spent between $921 and $988 on textbooks and other required course materials.⁸ (See Figure 2.1.)

First published in 1836, McGuffey Readers helped enable the nineteenth-century U.S. literacy movement and the wave of western expansion. After the Civil War, they were the standard textbooks in thirty-seven states. With 130 million copies published since the first edition, the readers are still in print and in use, with the latest revised version published in the late 1990s.

Mass Market Paperbacks

Unlike the larger-sized trade paperbacks, which are sold mostly in bookstores, mass market paperbacks are sold on racks in drugstores, supermarkets, and airports, as well as in bookstores. Contemporary mass market paperbacks—often the work of blockbuster authors such as Stephen King, Danielle Steel, and John Grisham—represent the largest segment of the industry in terms of units sold. But because the books are priced low (under $10), they generate less revenue than trade books. Paperbacks first became popular back in the 1870s, when middle- and working-class readers popularized dime novels. In 1939, when publisher Pocket Books lowered the price of these books from fifty or seventy-five cents to just twenty-five cents by slashing costs, such as author royalties, readers devoured even more of them.

48

A major innovation in mass market paperback publishing came with the instant book, a marketing strategy that involves publishing a topical book right after a major event occurs. Pocket Books produced the first instant book, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A Memorial, six days after FDR’s death in 1945. However, these books suffer from the same problems that their TV counterparts do: Because these accounts are cranked out so quickly, they have been accused of containing shoddy writing, lacking in-depth analysis and historical perspective, and simply exploiting tragedies.

Religious

The best-selling book of all time is the Bible, in all its diverse versions. Over the years, the success of Bible sales has created a large industry for religious books, and many religious-book publishers have extended their offerings to include serious secular titles on such topics as war and peace, race, poverty, gender, and civic responsibility. After a record year in 2004 (twenty-one thousand new titles), this category has seen a slight decline. Yet it continues to play an important role in the book industry, especially during turbulent social times.

49

Reference

Reference books include dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases, almanacs, and volumes related to particular professions or trades, such as legal casebooks and medical manuals. Encyclopedias and dictionaries have traditionally accounted for the largest portion of reference sales. But these reference works have moved mostly to online formats since the 1990s in response to competition from companies offering different formats. These rival formats include free online or built-in word-processing software dictionaries, search engines such as Google, and online resources like Wikipedia.

University Press

The smallest market in the printed-book industry is the nonprofit university press, which publishes scholarly works for small groups of readers interested in specialized areas, such as literary theory and criticism, art movements, and contemporary philosophy. Whereas large commercial trade houses are often criticized for publishing only high-selling, mainstream books, university presses often suffer the opposite criticism—that they produce mostly obscure books that only a handful of scholars read.

Electronic and Digital Publishing

Within the formal categories previously discussed, publishers are continually experimenting with alternatives to the printed-book format to remain competitive and to leverage the advantages of new technologies now available in the digital age. Examples of these alternatives include audio books and e-books.

Audio Books

Audio books (once known as “books on tape,” though they are now available primarily on CD or as MP3 downloads) became popular in the 1990s and early 2000s and generally feature actors or authors reading versions of popular fiction and nonfiction trade books. Indispensable to many sightless readers and older readers with diminishing vision, audio books are also popular among readers who have long commutes by car or train, or who want to listen to a book while doing something else, like exercising. By the early 2000s, audio books were readily available on the Internet for downloading to iPods and other portable devices.

50

E-Books

The first electronic digital copies of books (or e-books) that could be shared and read using a computer can be traced back to the early 1970s. But it would be decades before the idea of digitizing copyrighted books, like current best-sellers, in the form of commercial e-books would gather steam.

There were some attempts by RCA and Sony in the early 1990s to create portable reading devices for e-books, but those early e-readers were criticized for being too heavy, too expensive, and too difficult to read, as well as for offering too few choices. It wasn’t until 2007 when Amazon, already the largest online bookseller, introduced its Kindle e-reader that the long-predicted digital book market started gaining traction. Bookselling giant Barnes and Noble soon followed with a competing product called the Nook. Apple, already experiencing success with its iTunes online store, opened the iBookstore. Since then, Amazon and Barnes and Noble have introduced more sophisticated e-readers (like the Kindle Fire) that resemble tablet computers, while certain apps allow smartphones and tablets to act as e-readers, even allowing a user to link multiple devices to a single online account. For example, a reader might download (in about a minute) a new book in the morning and start reading it on her Kindle, then resume reading it on the bus to work on her smartphone (on the exact same page she left off that morning), and then do the same thing over lunch on her iPad.

The allure of this convenience as well as numerous discounts for some e-book titles has turned electronic publishing into a juggernaut. In 2013, little more than a half decade since the Kindle was introduced, e-books accounted for 38 percent of adult fiction sales in the United States (in terms of revenue). Projections indicate that e-books will surpass the print book market by 2017.⁹

In 2011, in recognition of the boom in sales, the New York Times started publishing e-book best-seller lists in fiction and nonfiction. The giant Borders bookstore chain, in contrast, missed the e-book boom, which many believe contributed to its bankruptcy and closing in 2011.