ABSTRACT
The codex format may not be an audience member’s first encounter with a particular content brand, but enjoyment of, say, a screen adaptation frequently drives consumers to seek out the content in book form. This chapter investigates the economic, legal and audience dimensions of book content’s widely dispersed existence across the twenty-first-century media landscape. Adaptation, as a cultural phenomenon, has existed for as long as there has been more than one communications medium. Critical and commercial success for one agent within the adaptation industry frequently has a positive spillover effect for others in the network. A particularly long-lived legacy of Bluestone’s founding adaptation studies methodology has been the constraining assumption that a print version of a story necessarily predates a screen version. Global media conglomerates have gradually modified their formerly heavy-handed policing of fans’ copyright infringement after realising that it is counterproductive to alienate a property’s loyal fanbase.
