Papers presented by Amy Sopcak-Joseph since 2019

2023 Detroit, MI, United States

"Creating Content worth Circulating: Magazine Publishers, Intellectual Property, and Profit in the mid-Nineteenth Century"

Abstract:

What is the best way for a media company to build its brand and circulate content while also maximizing profit? This sounds like a modern dilemma, one experienced by the executives at Netflix. But nineteenth-century American magazine publishers like Louis A. Godey and George Graham faced the same problem. Both men began to pay contributors for original literary and visual content in the late 1830s. While this decision set their magazines apart from those reprinting tales from British magazines and renaming engravings already circulating (which both men had done earlier in the decade), it also meant that they needed paying customers. They faced additional frustration when fellow printers lifted their content and recirculated it at a lower price or even before issues had reached subscribers. Scholars of literature and media recognize Godey and Graham for taking out copyrights on their magazines in 1845 to protect their intellectual property and profits. Upon further examination, however, issues of Godey’s Lady’s Book and Graham’s Magazine stopped carrying copyright notices by 1847. Why was this? How does this change our understanding of how “pioneering” these publishers were if the 1845 copyrights were a short-lived experiment rather than a field-shaping trend? This paper explores these publishers’ conceptions of intellectual property, shaped by the early American printing trade and reshaped by antebellum contingencies. Godey and Graham were both steeped in the established norms of periodical editors, which revolved around exchanging content freely. This paper argues that they only experimented with copyrighting their magazines because the benefits of building their brand awareness when other editors reprinted their content outweighed the frustrations of potentially losing subscribers.

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2021 Hopin Virtual Events Platform

"Crafting a Nation of Ladies: Marketing Godey’s Lady’s Book in the Nineteenth Century"

Abstract:

Godey’s Lady’s Book, a monthly magazine published in Philadelphia, was a household name in nineteenth-century America. It circulated issues in the tens and then hundreds of thousands from the Northeast to the South and West, and it moved goods, information, and ideas from cultural centers abroad (London and Paris) and commercial capitals at home (Boston, New York, and Philadelphia) into aspiring homes all over the republic. Little attention has been paid, however, to the advertisements of products on the magazines’ covers or on how publisher Louis A. Godey marketed the magazine itself to readers and subscribers. This paper examines the ways in which Mr. Godey crafted the public image of the Lady’s Book from the magazine’s founding in 1830 through his retirement in 1877. Using prospectuses (advertisements) for new volumes that appeared on the Lady’s Book’s ephemeral paper covers as well as advertisements printed in newspapers, I argue that the branding of the magazine changed over time from a literary magazine to an editorial formula recognizable in women’s magazines and lifestyle websites today. By the 1850s, Godey declared his magazine to be “The Book of the Nation,” and the marketing within the magazine proliferated. He introduced a personal shopping service and began selling items like sewing needles, connecting rural readers with fashionable goods from East Coast merchants. The Lady’s Book attracted readers by providing access to the necessary accoutrements to women across geographic and social class boundaries, all through a single, trusted brand. The history of the Lady’s Book’s branding offers insight into the periodical publishing business, the magazine’s role as an agent of nationalism and idealized gender roles, and ultimately, its appeal as a consumer good.

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