A guide to the creative industries

Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce
Author: Richard E. Caves
Genre: Academic - microeconomics in action

If you are interested in getting an in-depth understanding of how the creative industries work - movie production, book publishing, art galleries, music distribution, etc. - I know no better starting point than this book.

It explains why Hollywood occasionally releases ten ton turkeys like Travolta's infamous 'Battlestar Galactica', it illuminates exactly how difficult it is to get a fiction book published (and why), and it exposes how major music publishers have been ripping off their artists in a thorough and systematic manner. And lots more. Not a light read, but really interesting stuff. If I were to teach a course on either the creative industries or media economics, this would be the core curriculum.