Description

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Point of Sale offers the first significant attempt to center media retail as a vital component in the study of popular culture.  It brings together fifteen essays by top media scholars with their fingers on the pulse of both the changes that foreground retail in a digital age and the history that has made retail a fundamental part of the culture industries.  The book reveals why retail matters as a site of transactional significance to industries as well as a crucial locus of meaning and interactional participation for consumers. In addition to examining how industries connect books, DVDs, video games, lifestyle products, toys, and more to consumers, it also interrogates the changes in media circulation driven by the collision of digital platforms with existing retail institutions.  By grappling with the contexts in which we buy media, Point of Sale uncovers the underlying tensions that define the contemporary culture industries. 
 

About the Author

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DANIEL HERBERT is an associate professor in the department of film, television, and media at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  He is the author of Videoland: Movie Culture at the American Video Store and Film Remakes and Franchises.
 
DEREK JOHNSON is professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He is the author of Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries and Transgenerational Media Industries: Adults, Children, and the Reproduction of Culture. 
 

Praise For…

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"Herbert, Johnson, and their authors valuably expand our understanding of media retail—a largely overlooked node of media circulation. The book offers an excellent range of cases, themes, and issues that both ground these processes historically and address adjustments introduced by digital distribution."
— Amanda Lotz

"Attention media shoppers! Do not miss this truly original, eloquent argument for retail as an enduring, vital, and complex cultural space in entertainment’s digital age."   
 
— Jennifer Holt

"A valuable resource. Recommended."
— Choice

"[A] signal and important contribution to Media Studies...Herbert and Johnson, and their contributors, have done great service to our understanding on how to link media consumption with Retail Studies."
— Television and New Media