Deck 8: The Book Industry

Question 1

Books that help doctors, dentists, and lawyers keep up with their respective fields are called

A) Consumer books
B) Professional books
C) Trade books
D) Subscription reference

Answer 1

B
Explanation: Professional books are about specific fields and are meant to educate. The other three are types of consumer books.

Question 2

Religious, book club, and subscription reference belong to which type of books?

A) Trade
B) El hi
C) Mail order
D) Consumer

Answer 2

D
Explanation: Consumer books is the broader category that encompasses all three of these.

Question 3

Which of the following works on behalf of authors to get their manuscripts before book industry members?

A) Literary agent
B) Acquisitions editor
C) Book rep
D) Editorial manager

Answer 3

A
Explanation: Literary agents are the ones who work for the clients. They know the industry and which publishers to take their clients' work to.

Question 4

Of the following, which one has the smallest percentage of industry sales?

A) Trade paperbacks
B) Book clubs
C) Mail order books
D) Subscription reference

Question 5

Who developed the printing press around the year 1440?

A) Da Vinci
B) Gutenberg
C) Charlemagne
D) Marconi

Question 6

According to Figure 7.2 in the text, which of these four types of trade books sold the least amount in 2014?

A) juvenile trade
B) adult trade
C) audio books
D) religious

Question 7

Books that are aimed at the general public are known as what kind of books?

A) general interest
B) professional
C) mass market
D) consumer

Question 8

According to the timeline of the book industry, in what year was the Book-of-the-Month Club founded?

A) 1904
B) 1939
C) 1891
D) 1926

Question 9

How many hardcover copies must a title sell to achieve best seller status?

A) 100,000
B) 75,000
C) 200,000
D) 50,000

Question 10

According to Figure 7.3 in the text, in which department does the book designer work in a typical book publishing house?

A) editorial
B) marketing
C) business and administration
D) production

Question 11

When assessing a title's popularity, which of the following is not a popularity indicator?

A) the content of reviews
B) the size of the print run
C) the likelihood of a sequel
D) the scope of the marketing plan

Question 12

Which of the following strategies is not used by a publisher to reduce the risk of failure during the production process?

A) offering authors advances on royalties
B) conducting prepublication research
C) developing new authors that have won writing competitions
D) making use of authors with positive track records

Question 13

According to the list of publishing firms, which of the following is the largest publisher in the world?

A) Hachette Book Group
B) AOL Time Warner
C) HarperCollins
D) Penguin Random House

Question 14

At the start of the chapter, who said the following: "If I rely on just the bookstore sales, I won't make a living. Putting (my book) online does not put my livelihood at risk; you make a living finding new ways to do business."?

A) Nora Roberts
B) Suzanne Collins
C) Stephen King
D) Cory Doctorow

Question 15

In ancient times, books were copied by hand in places called

A) print shops
B) scriptoria
C) academies
D) agoras

Question 16

The technology adapted to the printing press originated in the

A) ship building industry
B) wine industry
C) textile industry
D) glass blowing industry

Question 17

The development of the printed book encouraged

A) the Protestant Reformation
B) the Renaissance
C) the growth of science
D) all of these

Question 18

The printed predecessor of today's TV operas and Harlequin romances were called

A) lady books
B) domestic novels
C) emotive novels
D) fantasy novels

Question 19

Trade books include

A) books made primarily for classroom use in grades K through 12
B) mass market paperbacks
C) books that help medical doctors keep up with new medicines
D) all of these

Question 20

Book clubs

A) provide a way to distribute books
B) serve general readers only
C) have rapidly declined as a result of Internet competition
D) all of these

Question 21

Subscription reference books are

A) the same as university press books
B) include cook books
C) include dictionaries and atlases
D) all of these

Question 22

The book publishing industry is

A) still dominated by many hundreds of small publishing companies
B) characterized by a handful of companies that dominate the most lucrative areas of the business
C) carefully regulated by government agencies that discourage conglomeration
D) is not very profitable

Question 23

An acquisitions editor is responsible for

A) collecting royalties
B) seeking out smaller publishing companies for mergers with larger publishing companies
C) developing a manuscript into a book
D) seeking out new authors and titles

Question 24

University presses usually publicize their books

A) at academic conferences
B) on cable television
C) in coffee houses near university campuses
D) all of these

Question 25

Literary agents earn about ten percent on all income related to a book that is paid to the

A) editorial director
B) author
C) acquisitions editor
D) publishers

Question 26

Plagiarism became an issue involving a

A) book by Alex Haley
B) book that served as the basis for a popular television series
C) blockbuster
D) all of these

Question 27

Publishers reduce risk by

A) avoiding materials that have done well in the past
B) conducting extensive---and very expensive---pre-publication research
C) using authors with positive track records
D) all of these

Question 28

Advances on royalties

A) are carefully avoided by the book publishing industry
B) usually mean that the publisher will have the opportunity to sell paperback and foreign rights to other publishers
C) include payments of well over $1 million to unknown authors
D) all of these

Question 29

The largest advances usually go to

A) authors who are involved in other media
B) authors whose work is published by university presses
C) editors with positive track records
D) editors who have worked previously as literary agents

Question 30

In the book publishing industry, distribution is dominated by

A) the biggest trade publisher
B) wholesalers
C) Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins
D) all of these

Question 31

A particular book's popularity can be gauged by the number of

A) illustrations it contains
B) pages it contains
C) copies in the book's print run
D) all of these

Question 32

Independent bookstores have felt pressure from

A) wholesalers
B) bookstore chains
C) major publishing houses
D) all of these

Question 33

A presold title is one that

A) ties into other media material already popular with a specific audience
B) a literary agent sells directly to a chain
C) is praised by critics who have pre-publication versions but is not yet published
D) a wholesaler never distributes

Question 34

Chain bookstores

A) include Barnes & Noble
B) have been slow to introduce computer technology into their operations
C) get shorter credit terms than independent bookstores get from publishing houses
D) all of these

Question 35

Johannes Gutenberg ushered in a revolution in printing with

A) movable type
B) lampblack ink
C) the codex
D) a licensing system

Question 36

Electronic Books

A) were first presented by Amazon
B) have more than doubled in popularity as reported by the country's largest publishers
C) are more expensive due to the costs of digitization
D) all of these

Question 37

Trade books are sold at discount and drug stores.

Question 38

Royalties are payments made to authors based on the number of copies sold.

Question 39

The size of a print run and the content of reviews are possible indicators of a book's popularity.

Question 40

A new book written by Oprah Winfrey is presold to audiences of her cable channel and online media outlets.

Question 41

By offering coffee and food within their stores, brick-and-mortar stores such as Barnes & Noble offer fierce competition with Web sites such as Amazon.com

Question 42

The book industry frequently uses new and exciting authors to reduce the risks of failure.

Question 43

What made Gutenberg's approach to printing was his creation of movable type.

Question 44

Before the U.S. joined the International Copyright Convention in 1891, American publishers reproduced works by famous English writers without paying copyright fees.

Question 45

Dime novels were produced in a factory-like system and were highly formulaic.

Question 46

Most educational books provide pedagogy (learning materials) that help students learn the information contained within the books.

Question 47

Most acquisitions editors rarely read manuscripts brought to them by literary agents.

Question 48

To attain the status of blockbuster, a trade book must sell 10,000 copies.

Question 49

Academic editors tend to avoid going after works written by young professors on their way up the academic ladder.

Question 50

As a result of wholesalers' returns policy, publishing executives have learned to gamble, sometimes quite recklessly, on the number of books included in a print run.

Question 51

The content of reviews published in key periodicals is often used by publishing companies to gauge the success of a book.

Question 52

A book tour is a series of appearances that an author makes in various cities to promote a title and stimulate sales.

Question 53

California and Texas greatly influence the textbook publishing industry, because these are the two largest states that have centralized textbook selections.

Question 54

Generally, college students are satisfied with the price of textbooks.

Question 55

In order to maximize synergy, media conglomerates may choose to limit book production to titles that work well with other media, such as TV and film.

Question 56

New editions of university textbooks are aimed, in part, in encouraging a brisk used-book market.

Question 57

Google's goal is to digitize every book ever printed.

Question 58

Most publishing executives believe that online sales will completely replace "brick and mortar" shops in the next couple of years.

Question 59

Schools have been experimenting with digital textbooks.

Question 60

Literary scholars are concerned that the high profile of plagiarism cases reveals a cultural bias against the book industry.

Question 61

Many book industry executives are concerned about the impact of e-readers on the sales of books that are far off the best-seller lists.

Question 62

What conditions facilitated the emergence of the book industry in the United States in the nineteenth century? Discuss at least three conditions.

Question 63

Explain what distinguishes production in trade publishing and university presses.

Question 64

How do trade book publishers reduce the risk of failure?

Question 65

What explains the decline in the number of independent bookstores?