Responses

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who was struggling with the comments on Blogger! I haven't been able to have any responses so here are my comments on the post about children's publishing as well as Michael's post on Amazon (better late than never I hope!).

I also really enjoyed this chapter and found the work that goes into creating children’s books surprisingly complex. I don’t believe children’s books have been affected by technology as much as other books have. Reading picture books to kids has been a tradition for a lot of families and I think that parents want to recreate some of the experiences they may have had as a kid, including turning pages and holding the physical copy, which is a different experience digitally. 

Something kind of weird about me is that when I go to Barnes in Noble, I always look through the picture book section because it’s so different now than it was when I was a kid. The biggest difference is the representation of characters. When I was a kid, there were characters of color or with disabilities, but I can’t remember any time they were the main character, besides maybe Little Bill. Luckily, now Little Bill does not need to carry the weight of an entire race on his Little shoulders because there are more books, not only with diverse characters, but about that very diverseness. After flipping through them, they seem to have good lessons and I wish I would have been exposed to these kinds of stories when I was a kid. 

There are also a lot of picture books by celebrities which I don’t thing I ever had as a kid. On the one hand, there are books by comedians (I’m pretty sure every late night television host has a book by now). Alternatively, there are more educational books by social forces like Malala Youfsafzai. 

When I was a kid, I used to love reading those books called “who was ‘blank’”. They had historical figure at focus illustrated on the front in huge bobble head caricature fashion. I wish there would have been more books like these that taught me about different lives/ struggles that I would have otherwise not known about. I’m glad picture books are evolving in this direction in order to teach kids about these topics before they reach the chapter book level.

We talk about representation in publishing a lot in this class and this chapter made me realize that children’s book publishing is a part of the industry where representation would make a huge difference. I have hope for children’s book publishing!

I thought the amazon piece was interesting, but not really surprising. Considering that the company essentially runs a monopoly over online shopping, it makes sense that book sales make up only a fraction of their market. I would argue that this fraction probably represents the same amount that book sales make up in the real world market. 

Personally, I love having a physical copy of a book, however, some of the comments here on the blog have made me realize that this is kind of a privilege. I’m glad that eReaders exist because I do agree that they can increase accessibility. Even if someone can afford to buy real books, having a Kindle makes it easier to download content and could widen the range of audiences for books.

I liked the metaphor Riannah made about Amazon and the book industry being like an internship at a large company. Yes, there are people buying books and benefitting from the access that amazon gives them, so even if Amazon isn’t paying much attention, the customer is still satisfied so I don’t think it matters much. Does it make me resent Amazon and Bezos’ power? Definitely. But sadly, I guess that’s just good business.