Publishing
The trade. The publisher, the editor, the agent, the advance, the imprint, paperback revolutions, Penguin, the airport bestseller, the conglomerate merger, self-publishing, and how a manuscript becomes a product.
Part of Books
60 moments in this segment.
- - Bacon 1628 New Atlantis title page. Title page of New Atlantis in the second edition of Francis Bacon's Sylva sylvarvm: or A naturall historie. In ten centvries. Published: London, William Lee at the Turks, 1628
- - 1916 The Evanescent City, George Sterling's best-selling book
- - Otto Frank on the diary of Anne Frank. A 1976 BBC children's television interview with Anne Frank's father about editing and publishing the diary.
- - Computer Chronicles on desktop publishing, 1986. The 1986 episode of Computer Chronicles on the arrival of desktop publishing.
- - Computer Chronicles on desktop publishing, 1987. The 1987 episode of Computer Chronicles surveying the new desktop publishing tools.
- - Building an independent Nigerian publisher. Muhtar Bakare on leaving banking to found Kachifo and get African literature into Nigerian readers' hands.
- - Naguib Mahfouz. A documentary on the Egyptian Nobel laureate, whose Children of Gebelawi was banned in Egypt for decades and who was stabbed in 1994.
- - Who was Harriet Beecher Stowe?. PBS American Experience introduces the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the best-selling American novel of the nineteenth century.
- - The dawn of desktop publishing. Computerphile on the Apple LaserWriter and the moment quality printing reached the desk.
- - Kenya's new writers. CGTN Africa panel on the growth of the Kenyan literary scene beyond the generation of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.
- - The publishing formats of Dickens's first editions. A rare-book dealer explains how Dickens's novels appeared in monthly serial parts before being bound as books.
- - The Fabrica and the Epitome, 1543. Sachiko Kusukawa on Vesalius's two 1543 books, the vast Fabrica and its cheap companion Epitome, and what publishing both at once tells us about intended readerships.
- - How publishers and the War Department made 120 million books. Talk on the collaboration between publishers, librarians and the US War Department that produced the Armed Services Editions.
- - Allen Lane and Penguin Books. A film made for Penguin's fiftieth anniversary on the man who put good books in paperback at sixpence in 1935.
- - Armed Services Editions. A librarian shows the pocket-sized paperbacks printed for American troops in the Second World War, sized to fit a uniform pocket and printed on magazine presses.
- - The first 25 Penguins. A close look at the earliest Penguin paperbacks published in Britain in 1935.
- - Leonardo's notebooks brought together. British Library curator on displaying selections from three Leonardo notebooks, including the Codex Leicester, in the 500th anniversary year of his death.
- - Amazon Empire: the rise and reign of Jeff Bezos. A FRONTLINE documentary on Amazon, which began as an online bookseller and reshaped how books are priced and sold.
- - How Penguin published Hiroshima. The story of Penguin's paperback edition of John Hersey's Hiroshima.
- - From dime novels to pulp fiction. An academic lecture tracing cheap popular publishing from frontier dime novels through to the pulps.
- - The paperback revolution. A history of the cheap paperback, from Penguin and Pocket Books to the wartime editions that put books in pockets.
- - All about advances: what authors should expect. An Authors Guild panel explaining how publishers structure advances and royalties in book contracts.
- - The economics of book publishing. An economics podcast examines how publishing houses actually make money, including advances, returns and the role of bestsellers.
- - Scrutiny over the $2.2 billion publishing merger. A news report on the Justice Department's antitrust challenge to the proposed Penguin Random House acquisition of Simon & Schuster.
- - What the merger trial revealed about how publishers pay authors. Author Brandon Sanderson walks through testimony from the antitrust trial, including evidence on advances and how few titles sell well.
- - Framing a page from Leonardo's notebook. British Library conservators prepare a c. 1500 Leonardo da Vinci notebook page for display.
- - Copyright for all. Library of Congress on how copyright works for anyone who writes, records or photographs.
- - Authors sue OpenAI over books used in training. A report on the Authors Guild suit brought by novelists alleging their books were used without permission to train language models.
- - Serialisation and the Victorians. A discussion of how Victorian novels were published in instalments and how that shaped their writing and sale.
- - Craig Fehrman on presidents as authors. A discussion of Author in Chief, on the long history of American presidents writing and publishing books.
- - 150 years of Publishers Weekly. C-SPAN marks the anniversary of the book trade's principal journal and its record of the industry.
- - Hillel Italie on the Penguin Random House–Simon & Schuster merger. An Associated Press books reporter explains the blocked $2.2bn merger and what the antitrust trial revealed about publishing.
- - News about books and the publishing industry. A C-SPAN roundup of current book-trade news, covering sales, imprints and industry developments.
- - Keith Urbahn of the literary agency Javelin. A literary agent explains how books are pitched and sold to publishers and how advances are negotiated.
- - Artificial intelligence and the publishing industry. C-SPAN examines how generative AI is affecting publishers, authors and copyright, an active controversy in the trade.
- - Publisher Peter Osnos on political books. The founder of PublicAffairs discusses a career in publishing and the market for political titles.
- - John Sargent on running Macmillan. The former Macmillan CEO discusses his memoir Turning Pages and decades of decisions inside a major publishing house.
- - Cormac McCarthy and the publishing industry. C-SPAN's About Books discusses McCarthy's career alongside wider questions about how literary fiction is published.
- - Inside the book supply chain: Brian O'Leary of the Book Industry Study Group. C-SPAN's About Books interviews the executive director of the Book Industry Study Group on how the trade's production and distribution systems work.
- - The art of the blurb. C-SPAN examines the publishing convention of cover endorsements and how they are solicited and used to sell books.
- - Publishing analyst Brenna Connor on book sales. A Circana book-market analyst reviews sales data for the year, including which categories grew and which declined.
- - Andrea Fleck-Nisbet on independent book publishing. The head of the Independent Book Publishers Association discusses how small presses operate alongside the conglomerates.
- - From paper to finished notebook. A factory line taking paper through printing, folding, binding and trimming.
- - Kenyan publishers on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. Associated Press from Nairobi after the death of the novelist who abandoned English for Gikuyu, and on what that decision meant for African-language publishing.
- - Fair use or infringement: the Copyright Office report on AI training. A Hudson Institute panel debates the US Copyright Office's analysis of whether training generative AI on copyrighted books is fair use.
- - What a number one New York Times bestseller actually means. An explanation of how the bestseller list is compiled and why the ranking is not a simple sales count.
- - AI training and copyright law: updates from the courts. A Federalist Society panel reviews pending litigation and Copyright Office guidance on AI training data, with arguments on both sides.
- - David Baldacci testifies on AI and authors' copyright. The novelist gives evidence to a US Senate hearing arguing that AI training on books without licence threatens authorship.
- - Is book publishing dying? An author's view. Novelist John Green discusses the economics of publishing and whether industry consolidation and platform sales are ending it.
- - Anthropic settles authors' AI copyright suit for $1.5 billion. NBC News reports the settlement of a class action brought by authors over the use of their books to train AI models.
- - Charles Dickens: a short history. A London Review of Books segment on Dickens's career, including his serial publication and commercial success.
- - Audiobooks outsell e-books as format revenue grows. A publishing-news channel reports industry revenue figures showing audiobook growth overtaking e-book sales.
- - The blocked merger and the book industry. A District of Columbia Bar panel analyses the antitrust case that stopped Penguin Random House from acquiring Simon & Schuster.
- - Macmillan's CEO on what publishing looks like now. An editor summarises remarks by Macmillan's chief executive on the current state of trade publishing and what it means for authors.
- - Traditional publishing's quarterly numbers. A publishing-news channel reviews reported quarterly results for the major trade houses.
- - The rise and fall of the paperback book. An account of the mass-market paperback as a format, its boom decades and its contraction.
- - Book trade news: bestsellers and an AI book-award controversy. A roundup of current publishing news including sales figures and a dispute over an AI-assisted book winning an award.
- - Europe's AI rules reach authors worldwide. A publishing-news podcast covers how EU AI transparency requirements affect authors and publishers outside Europe.
- - AI firms are buying and destroying antique books. Forbes reports on AI companies acquiring old and rare printed books in order to digitise them for training data.
- - AI companies are buying and destroying books to scan them. CBS News covers a 404 Media investigation finding that AI firms buy print books, cut the spines off and scan the pages.