Research Guide to American Literature

The AIDS epidemic and the ways gay communities faced the crisis have
been documented in novels such as Paula Martinac’s Home Movies (1993) and
Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hours (1998) and in plays
including Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart (1985), Tony Kushner’s Angels in
America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes (1993), and Paul Rudnick’s Jeffrey
(1994). Other important works trace characters’ double marginalization based on
race and sexuality; they include Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
(1982), Paula Gunn Allen’s Woman Who Owned the Shadows (1983), and Randall
Kenan’s Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (1992).
After decades of growth, publishers, booksellers, and writers faced more
competition in the 1970s and subsequent decades. A rise in the cost of hardcover
books, industry responses to these costs, and the development of the Internet, as
well as technology in general, have transformed publishing methods and reading
habits. The era experienced an explosion in the number of books being published
and in the mega-bookstores, such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, and chains,
such as B. Dalton and Waldenbooks, in which they were sold, accompanied by
a shrinking number of independent bookstores. To survive, the latter started to
engage in specialized marketing practices directed at local communities. Book
clubs and reading groups have also grown, a trend strikingly similar to one that
occurred in the 1890s. The local groups were inspired by Oprah’s Book Club,
created by the popular talk-show host Oprah Winfrey in 1996; it quickly devel-
oped the power to catapult Winfrey’s selections to best-seller status in what
has come to be known as the “Oprah effect.” To readers these changes brought
lower prices and more-convenient access to books; to publishers they brought
increased profits and more-sophisticated tracking of reader tastes; and to writers
they brought larger numbers of readers and, in some cases, enormous royalties.
Some critics, however, have complained about an emphasis on formulaic writing
and best sellers.
The trend toward mass-market and trade paperback books that had begun
before 1970 continued, but with some innovations. Publishers more frequently
released literary fiction as paperback originals instead of bringing them out first
in hardcover. Some of these paperbacks even feature ragged-edge pages and
cover flaps in imitation of hardback books and their dust jackets. McInerney’s
novel Bright Lights, Big City (1984) and Jhumpa Lahiri’s short-story collection
Interpreter of Maladies (1999) are examples of books that were published first in
paperback. Since trade-size paperbacks sell for about a third less than their hard-
cover counterparts, they earn smaller profits for publishers and lower royalties for
writers. But since they sell twice as fast as hardcover books, paperbacks can help
writers build audiences. In addition, the lower production and royalty costs may
encourage publishers to take a chance on new writers.
By the late 1990s hardcover sales were flat, with returns of unsold books
reaching almost half. Booksellers found more-efficient distribution methods,
using sophisticated scanning technologies and fewer employees to track sales.
Amazon.com, which went online in 1995, is the largest Internet bookseller
worldwide. Distributing and selling books are not the only aspects of book con-
sumption that have relocated to the digital realm. Amazon also allows buyers to

Historical and Social Context 1