Epochal Change: Print Culture and Economics.

The book publishing industry changed dramatically from the 1960s on. A series of mergers and takeovers eventually made trade books for the most part a product of media conglomerates. This transformation accompanied a broader one: the larger, stable, 'Fordist' corporations that had dominated the American economy since 1900 gave way after 1970 to agile companies, most of them multinational, that exhibit much greater flexibility in product design, labor strategies, and marketing. Trade book publishing neatly instances the shift from one epoch to another in the history of capitalism.