The Fine Print
On the Media
WNYC Studios
4.6 • 8.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 September 2022
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The federal court is hearing a case that could change the publishing industry as we know it. On this week’s show, hear what readers will lose if conglomerates further monopolize the market. Plus, print sales far exceed expectations — it turns out readers do not want to curl up with a good ebook.
1. Alexandra Alter [@xanalter], reporter at the New York Times, on how the booming publishing industry is wrestling with supply chain nightmares and more to meet reader demand. Listen.
2. Katy Waldman [@xwaldie], writer at The New Yorker, explains what's at stake in the DOJ v. Penguin Random House case. Listen.
3. Margot Boyer-Dry [@M_BigDeal], freelance culture writer, on why book covers are looking more and more similar, blobs and all. Listen.
4. John B. Thompson, Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, on how Amazon changed the book market for good, and why the appeal of the print book persists. Listen.
Music in this week's show:Paperback Writer - Quartetto d’Archi Dell'Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Guiseppe VerdiTymperturbably Blue - Duke EllingtonI Could Write A Book - Miles DavisTateh’s Picture Book - Randy NewmanMy Baby Loves A Bunch of Authors - Moxy Fruvous
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Everyone was braced for the collapse of the book Retail Ecosystem. |
| 0:05.0 | Instead, what we saw was an incredible boom. |
| 0:09.0 | The hazy crazy publishing biz, where WhatsApp is now down and what's down is now up. |
| 0:15.0 | From WNYC in New York, this is on the media, I'm Brooke Gladstone. |
| 0:20.0 | In pursuit of the next blockbuster, publishers remix the old big hits. |
| 0:25.0 | You hear a lot of joking and snarking about the girl and the window, the girl with a tattoo and the window, |
| 0:32.0 | the girl on the train with a tattoo and the window. |
| 0:35.0 | Plus, is paper the new vinyl? |
| 0:38.0 | The old-fashioned reading device of the print-on-paper book delivers certain things to people that they highly value. |
| 0:44.0 | With an ebook. You can't put it on your shelf. You can't give it to someone as a gift. |
| 0:48.0 | Blobs on book covers supply chain nightmares and antitrust lawsuits. |
| 0:53.0 | It's all coming up after this. |
| 1:01.0 | From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. |
| 1:04.0 | I'm Brooke Gladstone and this week we probe publishing. |
| 1:09.0 | Analysts and assorted other worry warts have long foreseen the industry's death by trampling |
| 1:15.0 | under the heavy boots of our screen-dominated culture, a risk-averse mega-houses, |
| 1:21.0 | and of course Jeff Bezos. |
| 1:24.0 | Amazon.com is the reason that there is all this heartache in the book industry. |
| 1:29.0 | All the bookstores are disappearing. The independence are gone and Barnes and Noble's the only thing standing |
| 1:34.0 | and they've got a major fight going on about the future, even a Barnes and Noble's. The whole industry is changed. |
| 1:39.0 | Well, the publishing industry has been doomed as long as I've been in the publishing industry, which is 25 years. |
| 1:44.0 | So it's an industry that is in the state of perpetual crisis. |
... |
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