with serial killers, who seemed to surface with more
regularity as the decade progressed.
Subsequent Events When he was executed at the
San Quentin penitentiary on February 23, 1996,
Bonin became the first person in California to be
executed using lethal injection. The method was
touted at the time as more humane than the gas
chamber—California’s previous method of execu-
tion—but it would later become controversial as un-
necessarily painful for those being executed.
Further Reading
Hickey, Eric W.Serial Murderers and Their Victims.4th
ed. Belmont, Calif.: Thomson Higher Education,
2006.
Levin, Jack, and James Alan Fox, eds.Mass Murder:
America’s Growing Menace. New York: Plenum Press,
1985.
Leyton, Elliot. “Towards an Historical Sociology of
Multiple Murder.” InSerial Murder: Modern Scien-
tific Perspectives, edited by Elliot Leyton. Burling-
ton, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000.
Jocelyn M. Brineman and Richard D. McAnulty
See also Atlanta child murders; Central Park jog-
ger case; Homelessness; Night Stalker case; Supreme
Court decisions.
Book publishing
Definition: Professional publication, marketing,
and distribution of fiction and nonfiction books
The 1980’s represented a period of change in the book pub-
lishing industr y. Corporate acquisitions, new computer sys-
tems, and the proliferation of bookseller chains transformed
the processing and distribution practices of the publishing
companies.
the United States Business and the economy in
its golden age after World War II (1939-1945). The
Canada Business and the economy in
American culture experienced intellectual growth
as well, thanks in part to the G.I. Bill, which helped
fund education for veterans. A better-educated pop-
ulace with more money to spend created new mar-
kets for authors and literary enterprises. The situa-
tion began to change, however, in the 1970’s and
1980’s: The industry began suffering from bureau-
cratization and from a blockbuster mentality similar
to the one developing in Hollywood at the same
time. Rather than make a modest profit on each of
many titles, publishers began to focus the bulk of
their marketing efforts on a few best sellers each sea-
son, leaving many books to fall through the cracks,
unable to find their audience.Business Mergers, the Best Seller, and Bookstore
Chains Mergers and acquisitions in the industry
continued from the 1970’s. Penguin, a subsidiary of
the Pearson conglomerate, expanded its publishing
markets, whereas Simon & Schuster expanded into
textbooks and software. In 1986, Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich bought the educational and publishing
rights owned by the Columbia Broadcasting System
(CBS), which already included Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston.
In order to create a broad appeal for the general
public, publishing houses began to rely on fiction or
nonfiction titles that were massive best sellers, in
such genres as true crime, celebrity scandals, ro-
mance, Westerns, and science fiction. The result was
that work of lesser quality (but that was easier to cate-
gorize and market to a mass audience) took prece-
dence over more original works that were difficult
to pigeonhole. These mass-market books produced
the profits that editors used to underwrite riskier
works, especially those produced by new authors.
Paperbacks, popularized in the 1950’s, began to
dominate sales in the industry, because they were
cheaper to produce. However, by the mid-1980’s,
both hard- and soft-cover books doubled in price,
making consumers more selective in their title pur-
chases. Hardcover book sales declined from 54 per-
cent in 1978 to 43 percent in 1983. This saturation of
titles caused a glut in the market, and the excess
overhead, in the form of unsold books, caused the
industry to strengthen its reliance on backlists.
Booksellers had always been able to return unsold
copies for full credit, and the percentage rates of re-
turns kept increasing. Moreover, retail bookstore
chains like Barnes and Noble and Borders Books
had the power to limit pricing on titles, because they
sold such a high percentage of the industry’s prod-
ucts. Their influence on pricing helped consumers,
but it further reduced publishers’ profits.
The industry had regularly given extravagant cash
advances to its most prominent authors—who pro-
vided the blockbuster best sellers upon which pub-
lishers were increasingly dependent. These authorsThe Eighties in America Book publishing 127