Abstract
The 2014 output of comics scholarship in English is focused on only a few substantive areas. The predominant focus is on superheroes, and to a lesser degree there is interest in social issues (such as the representation of minorities) and biographical histories and works of individual artists.1 In contrast, other areas, such as the economics of comics publishing, are largely neglected. Yet before the widespread introduction of the internet, publishers were the only way to get a comic mass distribution.2 It was (and largely still is) the publishers who invested their money in the material production, distribution, and promotion of a comic, and even today they take on greater financial risk than all other players later in the chain, such as distributors or retailers. Book publishing remains, after all, “a complex, adaptive, semi-chaotic industry” (Greco 2013, 5).
Keywords
- Publishing House
- Publishing Industry
- Book Publishing
- News Item
- Publication Format
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.
Buying options
References
Barzilai-Nahon, Karine. 2009. Gatekeeping: A Critical Review. Annual Review of Information, Science and Technology 43(1): 1–79.
Brienza, Casey. 2016. Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Bruns, Axel. 2003. Gatewatching, not Gatekeeping: Collaborative Online News. Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy: Quarterly Journal of Media Research and Resources 107: 31–44.
Clark, Giles, and Angus Phillips. 2014. Inside Book Publishing. New York: Routledge.
Coser, Lewis A. 1975. Publishers as Gatekeepers of Ideas. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 421: 14–22.
Coser, Lewis A., Charles Kadushin, and Walter W. Powell. 1982. The Culture and Commerce of Publishing. New York: Basic Books.
Deluliis, David. 2013. Culturally Gatekeeping the Black Comic Strip. In Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation, eds. Sheena C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II, 239–250. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
de Vries, Rudi. 2012. Comics and Co-evolutions. A Study of the Dynamics in the Niche of Comics Publishers in the Low Countries. PhD diss., University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands.
Fantagraphics. 2015. Frequently Asked Questions. Accessed July 19, 2015. http://fantagraphics.com/flog/frequently-asked-questions/
Greco, Albert N. 2013. The Book Publishing Industry. New York: Routledge.
Gunderson, Jessica. 2015. Self-Publishing and E-Books in the Book Industry. In 18th Annual Steven Galovich Memorial Student Symposium, July 4, Lake Forest, IL. Accessed July 10, 2015. http://publications.lakeforest.edu/gss/gss2015/program/35/
Hesmondhalgh, David. 2009. The Cultural Industries. London: Sage.
Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: NYU Press.
Kinsella, Sharon. 2000. Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Lefèvre, Pascal. 1986. De selekterende stripuitgevers. Een onderzoek naar de gatekeeping bij de grote stripuitgeverijen Lombard en Dupuis. M.A. diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
———. 2000. The Importance of Being ‘Published’. A Comparative Study of Different Comics Formats. In Comics and Culture, eds. Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen, 91–105. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum at the University of Copenhagen.
———. 2013. Narration in the Flemish Dual Publication System. The Crossover Genre ‘Humoristic Adventure. In From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative, eds. Daniel Stein and Jan-Noël Thon, 255–269. Berlin: De Gruyter.
———. 2015. Gatekeeping at Two Main Belgian Comics Publishers, Dupuis and Lombard, at a Time of Transition (in the 1980s). Studies in Comics 6(1): 109–119.
Lefèvre, Pascal, and Morgan Di Salvia. 2011. A Creative Culture Where It’s Hard to Make a Living. The Socio-economic Situation of Comics Authors and Illustrators in Belgium. European Comic Art 4(1): 59–80.
Martens, Thierry. 1988. Le Journal de Spirou. 1938–1988. Cinquante Ans d’histoire(s). Fleurus: Dupuis.
Matsui, Takeshi. 2009. The Diffusion of Foreign Cultural Products: The Case Analysis of Japanese Comics (Manga) Market in the US. Working Paper #37. Princeton University, Center for Arts and Cultural Studies.
Noppe, Nele. 2014. The Cultural Economy of Fanwork in Japan: Dojinshi Exchange as a Hybrid Economy of Open Source Cultural Goods. PhD diss., Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Ren, Xiang. 2014. Creative Users, Social Networking, and New Models of Publishing. Cultural Science 7(1): 58–67.
Rogers, Mark Christiancy. 1997. Beyond Bang! Pow! Zap!: Genre and the Evolution of the American Comic Book Industry. PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI.
Shoemaker, Pamela J., and Tim P. Vos. 2009. Gatekeeping Theory. New York: Routledge.
Singer, Jane B. 2014. User-generated Visibility: Secondary Gatekeeping in a Shared Media Space. New Media and Society 16(1): 55–73.
Tandoc, Edson C. 2014. Journalism is twerking? How web analytics is changing the process of gatekeeping. New Media & Society 16(4): 559–575.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lefèvre, P. (2016). Gatekeeping in Comics Publishing: A Practical Guide to Gatekeeping Research. In: Brienza, C., Johnston, P. (eds) Cultures of Comics Work. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55090-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55090-3_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55477-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55090-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)