Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Linguistic? Dunno.
But cultural, absolutely.
Reading for entertainment is not a universal custom, even among affluent societies. It has, however, been common in the US/UK since the early 19th century with their history of Penny Dreadfuls, Story Papers, and Dime novels. They were all steps towards the pulps of the early 20th and, eventually, paperbacks. Now ebooks are moving to fill the market for affordable prose entertainment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_dreadful
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_paper
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dime_novel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_magazine
In many countries, though, prose has traditionally been dominated primarily by literary prose and reading for entertainment isn't as ingrained in the popular culture and thus the content isn't as common. Chicken and egg. Without a tradition of native popular prose there is little incentive for local writers to produce popular prose and without a ready supply of content the habit doesn't spread.
In more recent times, the niche of affordable entertainment has been filled via TV dramas, particularly in latin america:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenovela
And of course, in more recent times competition for eyeball-hours (and consumer spending) has expanded to include video games and online social media (gossip).
Even in countries with a long history of popular prose, reading for entertainment has been on a long, steady decline going back 50 years and more. It's not all due to TV, though. Changing publisher policies have had a lot to do with it, too, which is one of the factors the OP paper looks into.
It's not a simple issue by any means. |
In fact two things I understand brought pulp to a close. First there was the shortage of paper during WWII as it was needed for military use. Many pulp magazines folded during the war. Then after the war I understand the pulp evolved into the paperback. There are still a few magazines around but many writer's went to writing books which were brought out as paperbacks. Probably they made more money per sale of a paperback than they would by serial installments of a book in a magazine.
And after WWII there was competition in the form of the (still quite new) interest in TV. Movie theater's had the same problem. It's one big reason why many outdoor theater's closed their doors and at least some indoor ones too probably. Why pay admission to see a movie if by waiting you can see it on TV for free?
The paperback probably made sense for the consumer as well. I mean say a pulp magazine was .25 a copy and the story you wanted to read was spread out over 6 issues. That comes to $1.50 you have to spend to read the whole thing. And there was the danger of missing an issue as well. A paperback was probably about the same price .25 -.50 maybe (I don't know for sure though older paperback books do seem to have been very cheaply priced) and you got the whole story in one place.