Transnational Book Markets and Literary Reception in the Americas

Abstract

In her paper Transnational Book Markets and Literary Reception in the Americas, Molly Metherd argues that the most diffuse products of transnational cultural production in the come from mass media productions packaged for transnational audiences -i.e., Hollywood films, television shows, popular magazines, product advertisements -and that tend to homogenize messages, promote stereotypes, and simplify complex issues. However, another effort to make sense of shifting relationships in the is coming from a group of US-American and Spanish American literary figures. In their fiction, criticism, journalistic work, and public statements, such authors have been responding to the covalence of American cultures and interrogating mass media messages. Metherd examines the emergence of this transnational publishing industry which offers the institutional structure for authors to reach out to hemispheric audiences and its impact and relates the said situation to Chilean author Alberto Fuguet. She explores how, in order to accommodate these changing markets, Englishand Spanish-language publishers have formed strategic partnerships and introduced new imprints often releasing works simultaneously in English and Spanish and promoting authors to a larger hemispheric readership through shelf placement, advertising and book tours. Molly Metherd, Transnational Book Markets and Literary Reception in the Americas page 2 of 9 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 10.3 (2008):