Why These Books?: The Conglomerate Era in Publishing

Why These Books?: The Conglomerate Era in Publishing

Description: Why do we have this world of books and not any other? Why are these the books topping Amazon’s lists or sitting prominently on the shelves at Barnes & Noble and our local independent bookstores? In this talk, Dan Sinykin will discuss how the conglomeration of the publishing industry led to the dominance of romantasy, how publishers and prizes shape the kinds of stories that writers get to tell, and how independent and nonprofit publishing offers alternatives.

2:30 pm-3:30 pm - Graduate Student Coffee Chat – Coffee & Snacks to be Provided (Park Hall 261)

4:30 pm- 6:00 pm – Lecture (Park Hall 265)

Dan Sinykin is the author of American Literature and the Long Downturn: Neoliberal Apocalypse (Oxford 2020), Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature (Columbia 2023), and, with Johanna Winant, Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton 2025). He is working on a manuscript about the rise of, and alternatives to, Zionism in the Pale of Settlement.