Lisa Fletcher and Elizabeth Leane, "Space, Place, and Bestsellers: Moving Books" (Cambridge UP, 2024)

Summary

From airport bookstores to deckchairs, as audiobooks downloaded by commuters, and on Kindles and other portable devices, twenty-first century bestsellers move in old and new ways. In Space, Place, and Bestsellers: Moving Books (Cambridge University Press Elements in Publishing and Book Culture series, 2024), Lisa Fletcher and Elizabeth Leane examine the locations and mobilities of the contemporary bestseller as a multi-format commercial object. It employs paratextual, textual, and site-based analysis of the spatiality of bestsellers and considers the centrality of geography to the commercial promise of these books. Space, Place, and Bestsellers provides analysis of the spatial logic of bestseller lists, evidence-rich accounts of the physical and digital retail sites through which bestsellers flow, and new interpretations of how affixing the label 'bestseller' individual authors and titles generates industrial, social, and textual effects. Through its multi-layered analysis, this book offers a new model for studying the spatiality of popular fiction.

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Jen Hoyer

Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive.

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