CPST gear

skaterbabscpst said:

Did you see the LLL benefit tote bag and the API benefit buttons?

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No, I didn't - will check 'em out soon ... although, the last thing I need is ANOTHER tote bag I can get 2 months worth of groceries in the totes I have as it is, LOL!

• Storyselling: are publishers changing the way children read? By Daniel Hade.
  • The Horn Book Magazine, Sept-Oct 2002 v78 i5 p509(9)
  • Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2002 Horn Book, Inc.
• "Reading," warned Tom Engelhardt in a 1991 article in Harper's, "may be harmful to your kids." Engelhardt argued that the new corporate owners of publishing houses such as Bertelsmann (Random House) and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (Harper-Collins) were so keenly interested in the toys, clothing, and recordings that could be spun off from children's books and sold that reading had come to resemble "listening, viewing, playing, dressing, and buying." The children's book had been liberated from the page, stated Engelhardt, and reading was becoming just another means of consumption.
• Few of us took Engelhardt very seriously then. After all, the relationship between children's books and spin-off merchandise dates back to the earliest days of children's book publishing. John Newbery often packaged his books with related merchandise, be it pincushions or balls or even headache remedies, in order to entice buyers. Publishers have always been in business to make a profit. How was this growth in spin-off merchandise any different from business as usual? Besides, wasn't this merchandise at least indirectly promoting reading? Wasn't a toy or an audiotape or a T-shirt a form of retelling the story, and wasn't retelling stories an important activity in the development of literacy? Perhaps the field was changing, but it was a change of scale. There were more children's books being published and there was more merchandise connected to children's books being made, but surely this meant children were reading more, and that had to be good. Didn't it?
• A decade later, and Clifford, Arthur, the Magic School Bus, Madeline, Curious George, Peter Rabbit, Harry Potter, and scores of other book characters have been stamped, stitched, webbed, printed, woven, filmed, and recorded onto a seemingly endless range of products. It may still be business as usual, but what constitutes usual business is much, much different from anything we've seen before.
• As we know, the mergers of the past decade have left the bulk of children's book publishing in the select few hands of large houses: HarperCollins, Penguin Putnam, Random House, Simon & Schuster, Scholastic, Houghton Mifflin. These large publishing houses are no longer simply businesses dedicated to producing books. Instead, the children's book industry is owned by large media conglomerates such as Viacom, the News Corporation, Pearson Corporation, Bertelsmann, Reed Elsevier, von Holtzbrinck, Scholastic, and Vivendi Universal.
• These eight corporations dominate children's book publishing in the United States. Together, they produced over 84% of the books reviewed in The Horn Book Magazine in 2000 and over 75% of the books that received a starred review in School Library Journal in 2000 (the constant being the degree of selectivity). For comparison, in 1967 the top eight children's book publishers accounted for just 34.4% of the reviews in the Horn Book and 38% of the starred reviews in SLJ. Given the influence of these journals on purchasing decisions, it is fair to assume that corporate-produced children's books are the ones children's book professionals most call children's attention to.
• Andre Schiffrin grew up in the book business. His father founded Pantheon Press, and Schiffrin was its managing director for thirty years until he was forced out by new corporate ownership. In his memoir, The Business of Books, Schiffrin notes that in the past, book publishers expected a profit margin of around four percent. Publishers accomplished this margin through an occasional best seller, a steady-selling backlist, and paperback and book club rights. The business was a balancing act between making money and publishing worthwhile books, and the industry saw itself as linked to intellectual and cultural life. As long as profit expectations were modest, the balancing act was possible.
• Today, Schiffrin states, the corporate giants who control publishing expect profits in the range of twelve to fifteen percent, a margin they have come to expect from their entertainment businesses of television, film, and recordings. To achieve this margin of profit, the emphasis has shifted from the backlist to the front list, and companies look beyond paperback and book club rights to new revenue streams offered by licensing. Publishers are more likely to turn to celebrity-authored books, series books, and books with television or movie tie-ins. Backlists are mined for highly recognizable characters and stories that offer strong merchandising possibilities. Authors whose sales don't reach company goals may find it difficult to sell another manuscript. The mass marketplace selects which books will survive, and thus the children's book becomes less a cultural and intellectual object and more an entertainment looking for mass appeal.
• Of course, children's books have always been subject to the desires of the marketplace. However, the marketplace for children's books is very different from what it once was. In the 1960s and 1970s, as we know, public and school libraries were the major market for children's books. Trained professionals committed to selecting high-quality literature did the purchasing. Federal, state, and local governments provided ample funding through a variety of programs. Those programs have long since vanished, leaving public library and school budgets emaciated. Library sales are rarely enough to sustain a book, especially if the publisher is looking for a twelve to fifteen percent return. There are exceptions, companies such as Holiday House and Front Street, that survive almost completely on library sales. However, these houses do not dominate the children's book market as do the larger, corporate-owned media firms that own HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Scholastic.
• The demise of the independent bookstore also figures into this shift. Bookstore sales are now dominated by chains such as Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble employs a single buyer for each of its categories of children's books. Whereas before, hundreds of independent bookstore owners would each decide which books to stock, now one person decides which picture books Barnes & Noble will stock in its hundreds of stores. This buyer is armed with the sales records of authors' or artists' previous books. Since chain store buyers change frequently, these previous sales figure prominently in the buyer's decision. The financial success of a particular book can be broken by the decision of a single buyer not to stock the title. Of course, if a publisher is willing to spend the money to participate in the many co-op promotions, they can persuade a bookstore chain to take a title the chain may otherwise have rejected, a distinct advantage for the corporate publishing houses over the smaller independent publishers.
• At independent bookstores, books are hand-sold; that is, the bookseller points out new titles that he or she has read and can personally recommend based on knowledge of the book and the customer. The special book can thus find its way to the special reader. Staff in the chain stores, on the other hand, have a high turnover rate and thus don't develop knowledge of the stock or the customers. So the chains depend on books that can sell themselves. Again, celebrity-authored books, books with television or film tie-ins, and series books fit the bill, books that can display something familiar and desirable.
• Naomi Klein in No Logo describes in detail how the modern corporation has shifted from making products to selling ideas. In other words, their business is developing brands. A brand transcends any particular product. For example, "Martha Stewart" is much more than the individual person or any particular product that carries her name. "Martha Stewart" is about a way of living, so when the consumer encounters the name "Martha Stewart," he or she associates certain ideas and meanings with the particular product. If successful, the brand will establish a relationship with consumers that will resonate deeply with the consumer's sense of identity.
• The corporate owners of children's book publishing really aren't in the business of publishing children's books anymore. (By corporate owners, I do not include the scores of editors and marketing directors who believe passionately in children's books, but who may now find themselves stymied in attempting to reconcile company goals and vocational ideals.) The business of corporate owners is developing brands. "The Company develops successful children's books and then builds these brands into multimedia assets.... Scholastic has developed strong name recognition associated with quality and dedication to learning," reads a passage from Scholastic's 2000 Annual Report. The Pearson Corporation, parent company of Penguin Putnam, boasts in its 2000 Annual report, "We ... own or have rights to some of the most highly prized and enduring brands in children's publishing." If you read these annual reports and those of Viacom, Vivendi Universal, and the rest, you may be surprised to learn that these brands and media assets are Madeline, Curious George, Peter Rabbit, Clifford, and the Magic School Bus. In other words, these corporations are hoping that children are attracted not to books so much as to any product that carries the brand's name. To the corporation, a Clifford key ring is no different from a Clifford book. Each is a "container" for the idea of "Clifford." Each "container" is simply a means for a child to experience "Cliffordness." In this world there is no difference between a book and a video or a CD or a T-shirt or a backpack.
• Today's corporation, Naomi Klein writes, understands that what is truly scarce and finite is the consumer's time. The corporation, then, seeks to expand its brands into as many aspects of a consumer's life as possible. Ideally, to the corporation, consumers would live their entire lives under the umbrella of a single brand. The goal isn't to sell as many copies of Madeline as possible (though that is still highly desirable) but to extend Madeline into as many aspects of a child's life as possible.
• When I was a young boy, I loved Curious George. He was so spontaneous and sincere, yet also so naughty. Back then I had to satiate my Curious George desires by checking the books out of the library and reading the stories over and over again until I had to return the books.
• If I were a boy today, I'd have an unimaginable range of choices through which to experience Curious George. In the morning I could wake up to the sound of my Curious George alarm clock ringing. Disbelieving it was already time to get up, I could turn on my Curious George lamp and check the time on my Curious George wall clock. Then I could throw off the Curious George comforter and kick down the Curious George bed sheet. I could look out my window that was trimmed in Curious George curtains my mother made from a bolt of Curious George cloth. Shuffling around the room, I might accidentally step on the toys I forgot to put away the previous evening: my Curious George drum, Curious George spinning top, Curious George jack-in-the-box (or more accurately George-in-the-box), and a host of Curious George puzzles. I'd slip on a Curious George T-shirt and my blue jeans. I'd look in on my baby brother, sleeping in a crib lined with Curious George bumpers and fitted with a Curious George sheet. Making my way to the kitchen, I'd find that my mother had made a plate of scrambled eggs, placed on my Curious George place mat. I'd reach for the Curious George salt and pepper shakers to season the eggs and then gobble them up. Mom would hand me my lunch, packed in my Curious George lunch box, which I would then stuff in my Curious George backpack. At school I'd find that my teacher had put up a Curious George wall hanging alphabet and had set up the flannel board with Curious George felt characters. Next to the computer, I could see a Curious George mouse pad and a stack of Curious George CD-ROM's. Coming home after school, I'd sneak a cookie from the Curious George cookie jar, look at the Curious George calendar, and count the days to Halloween. Then I'd grab my Curious George plush doll, put the Curious George Flies a Kite video in the VCR, snuggle into the comfy chair, and dream about wearing my Curious George costume on Halloween, collecting candy in my Curious George pail.
• I'm not making any of this up. I found all of these products, and more, listed on Amazon.com.
• Synergy is the word for this sort of cross-promoting merchandise. Primarily, the corporation achieves synergy one of two ways. The first is by vertically integrating the brand throughout the entire company. For example, when the movie Mulan came out, Disney Press published several editions of the Mulan story based on the characters created for the film. Disney also published a retelling by Robert D. San Souci with Hyperion. "The Making of Mulan" appeared on the Disney Channel, and an ice-ballet version of the story featuring Michelle Kwan was aired on ABC (which is owned by Disney). Disney is not unique. Viacom could publish a children's book through Simon & Schuster, make an animated television show for CBS or Nickelodeon, have Paramount Pictures develop a film, and, once the film is released onto DVD and video, rent it at Blockbuster. And should there be a music video associated with the film, that could be aired on MTV. Think Bob the Builder, Blue's Clues, and Rugrats.
• The second way to create synergy is to sell licenses of the brand to other companies to make games, toys, clothing, and other products that will display the brand. The Cheerios Counting Book is an example of a publisher--Scholastic in this case--buying a license from General Mills to make a book that looks like a Cheerios cereal box. General Mills benefits by pushing its brand into a new medium. Children can now consume Cheerios without actually eating them. Simon & Schuster benefits by being associated with a highly recognizable brand. Of course it works the other way. For example, Scholastic sells licenses for Clifford and the Magic School Bus, and Penguin Putnam sells licenses for Peter Rabbit and Madeline. The magnitude of licensing is astonishing. Pearson, the parent company of Penguin Putnam, boasts on its website that over two hundred companies now license The World of Beatrix Potter, making it "the largest international literary licensed merchandise program." By my count, in 1999, forty-four of the fifty top-selling children's hardcover titles as listed in Publishers Weekly were licensed books.
• Perhaps the most troubling effect of licensing, synergy, and vertical integration on children's books is that the book and each spin-off piece of merchandise and each retelling across another medium becomes a promotion for every other product based upon that story. Children reading, say, Clifford, the Big Red Dog are also reading a promotion for the Clifford television show, Clifford backpacks, and Clifford dolls, and vice versa. This ubiquitous cross-promoting blurs, if not erases, the line between advertisement and entertainment. The corporate owners of children's book publishing have successfully turned recreational reading into a commodity.
• With a synergized product, a company can now advertise Clifford at any point in the day when a Clifford book, game, backpack, CD-ROM, or doll is visible. Make T-shirts of your book characters, so a child can become a walking billboard for your books. Walking to and from school with an Arthur backpack provides an opportunity for a corporation to make its brand better known.
• There are also potential conflicts of interest. Reed Elsevier owns Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, two journals that are highly influential in the children's book field. Reed Elsevier recently purchased Harcourt, a major publisher of children's books. SLJ and PW now find themselves in the position of reviewing books produced by another division of their parent company. Borders, the second largest bookstore chain, recently announced that it will choose publishers to co-manage each of its 250 categories of books. Random House has been selected the "captain" of books for younger readers. As captain, Random House will assist in deciding which titles from all the books published by all the publishers will be carried, displayed, and marketed.
• Stories are the building blocks of our thinking. We use stories to interpret the events in our lives and to form our ideas about others and ourselves. These corporations hold a near monopoly on our culture's stories and the means to communicate those stories to us through books, films, television, audio recordings, and electronic media. They broker the ideas that get into books, film, television, music, information services, video games, and newspapers. These eight corporations plus a few others such as Disney (owner of Hyperion and Disney Press) and AOL Time Warner (also in the children's book business with Little, Brown) have become meaning brokers in our culture. With the globalization of culture on the rise, the influence these huge multimedia conglomerates have on people all over the world is profound. The temptation here is to see all this merchandise as promoting the reading of children's books and thus as a good thing. However, the stronger, overarching message to the child isn't "read" but "consume." How much Harry Potter or Madeline or Curious George or Peter Rabbit merchandise can you buy?
• Clearly, the large corporations who make children's books view children not as readers, but as consumers. The time a child spends reading, from their point of view, is little different from time spent watching television, each being an opportunity to sell their branded, synergized wares to the child, an opportunity to expand their brand's presence into nearly every part of a child's life. Corporations openly discuss developing brand loyalty among children, even among children ages zero to two. Think I'm exaggerating? Take a look at the board books available today--Cheerios, the OshKosh bear, Radio Flyer, Corduroy, Clifford, Arthur. So many of them point to an entire childhood filled with consuming branded products.
• Big Media now dominates the children's book industry. Their interests in children's books are far different from the standalone publishers of years past. Big Media is looking to create brands, license their brands to other companies, and integrate their brands throughout the corporation, creating synergies and cross-promoting wherever possible and ultimately establishing relationships with children that resonate with the child's sense of self, turning a child's act of consuming into an expression of identity. The individuality of a work of imaginative literature, and the individuality of a child's experience with literature, have been co-opted by corporate greed. Instead of individual works of imagination, children's literature has been submerged into a preference for cloning. New Curious George stories appear each publishing season even though H. A. and Margret Rey have long since died. HarperCollins recently announced that it would be producing new stories in the Chronicles of Narnia series, stories C. S. Lewis never imagined. Harriet the Spy--or her clone--lives on.
• There are exceptions, thankfully. Books of high literary quality appear each season and remind us that great storytelling can survive despite few possibilities for the books to create branded, synergized merchandise. But books such as these flourish commercially because they are noticed through starred reviews and especially through awards these books may receive. Newbery- and Caldecott-winning authors and illustrators are now interviewed by national media, and the gold and silver medallions affixed to honored books give them a huge advertising advantage over other books sitting next to them in Barnes & Noble. But only so many books can receive awards, and each year many well-crafted books are missed entirely by award committees. Would Harriet the Spy, a book that received no awards and some nasty reviews, have stayed in print had it first appeared last year? I hope so, but I have my doubts.
• Today's corporate children's book publishers are looking for stories that transcend the medium of the book to become a recognizable brand that can be licensed and integrated across a wide range of products and media. In turn, the megacorporations that own the stories and the means to communicate them to the public sell us and our children the cultural meanings that shape our lives. Schiffrin writes, "Books differ in crucial ways from other media. Unlike magazines, they are not advertiser-driven. Unlike television and films, they do not have to find a mass audience." How long can this remain true? The way children read is being transformed right in front of us, often with our assistance. It's remarkable that this transformation is occurring with no public discussion. While we have been struggling to promote children's reading, while we have been debating holistic versus explicit skills-based reading instruction, that same reading is busily making big money for Big Media.
• Perhaps the question we ought to be discussing is, What parts of our children are not for sale?
• Daniel Hade is an associate professor of children's literature at Pennsylvania State University.

need a shirt that says "dont mind me" b/c i generally look at seats when walking thru the parking lot.

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skaterbabscpst said:

"Turn signals - not just pretty lights"

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"Car seats are not luxeries".

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