November 11, 2021

How Amazon is Changing the Books We Read w/ Mark McGurl

49 minutes

Paris Marx is joined by Mark McGurl to discuss how Amazon is reshaping the publishing industry and altering the form of the novel itself.

Mark McGurl is a Professor of Literature at Stanford University. He’s also the author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing and Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon. Follow Mark on Twitter at @markjamesmcgurl.

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Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Jeff Bezos’ valedictorian speech was about space colonization.

Paris wrote about Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s early days.

US publishers, authors, and booksellers have written to Congress about Amazon’s effective monopolization of book sales, with more than 50% of the US book market.

Jane Friedman explains how Amazon shut down many of its writer-oriented programs, makes exclusivity hard to avoid, and dominates Kindle charts.

Novels and authors mentioned: Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You, Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, Rachel Cusk, and Ben Lerner.

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