The Digital Scholar

As the publishing world increasingly adopts new technologies, some of the common notions we have long held about publishing are being overturned. One notion that is beginning to lose its hold is the concept of the finished book.

Writers often acknowledge that their writing can always be improved. In the old publishing world, though, once a book went to press it was pretty much set in stone. Even minor changes or corrections to the text would have to wait until the next print run, that is, if the book even sold well enough to warrant another print run.

Nowadays, as print-on-demand (POD) and e-book technologies continue to proliferate within the print industry, books can more easily be corrected and improved. The “finished” manuscript can easily be tweaked or parts of the text can be re-written at any time, and these changes will go into effect when the next person orders or downloads a new copy of the book.

Publishing, in other words, is becoming more of a process than the production of a free-standing product. Writers are beginning to publish books electronically–and sometimes even in print–with the sole intention of soliciting feedback from their audience about how to improve their manuscript. They are also using different publishing mediums to distribute their work, so that they can reach as many readers as they possibly can and develop a following. All of this means that a finished book is fast fading.

The move towards publishing becoming more of a process has some real benefits. Scientific works, for example, can easily be updated to accommodate new findings and discoveries. Time-sensitive material can go to print faster, with the knowledge that any editorial errors can easily be corrected at a later time. And authors can test the waters by publishing their ideas and seeing if there is an audience for them before devoting even more time and effort to them.

But there is also a downside to this movement. The widespread circulation of different editions will make it more difficult to ensure that two people are talking about the same text, which is critical in some fields like the humanities or political science. The ease with which texts can be corrected or rewritten may also prompt authors to publish their manuscript before it is ready. The reputation of authors who publish and circulate too many texts of inferior quality can easily suffer as a result. And finally, readers may find it more difficult to find quality reading or research material if publishers rush manuscripts to print and then take a long time to go back to correct them or, worse, never do.

Writers may miss the sense of accomplishment they get when they submit their finished manuscript to their publisher. While such a sense of accomplishment may not be as concentrated in a singular moment in today’s publishing world, these kinds of moments become more frequent as the writer continues to improve the work and publishes it in various venues. These small victories can give the writer a much needed incentive to keep writing over time. I’m sure at least some writers will not miss the agony it takes to complete a finished manuscript that needs to be perfect in their eyes.

Textual editors know that even in the print world, the finished book is like an object placed between facing mirrors. The job of the textual editor is to look at various versions of a printed work and then reconcile the differences among them–which can result from printing errors, authorial changes or corrections, and subsequent editions–to produce a singular “authoritative” text. Of course, the text they produce only adds to the work of the next textual editor, who again is supposed to figure out what is the real “finished” book.

With current changes in publishing technologies, the textual editing of twenty-first century works may no longer involve facing mirrors; rather, it may well become impossible.

[W]e have to rethink our conceptions of literary forms or genres, in view of the technical factors affecting our present situation, if we are to identify the forms of expression that channel the literary energies of the present. . . . [W]e are in the midst of a mighty recasting of literary forms, a melting down in which many of the opposites in which we have been used to think may lose their force.

. . . [This] mighty process of recasting . . . not only affects the conventional distinction between genres, between writer and poet, between scholar and popularizer, but also revises even the distinction between author and reader.

* * *

An author who teaches writers nothing, teaches no one. What matters, therefore, is the exemplary character of production, which is able first to induce other producers to produce, and second to put an improved apparatus at their disposal. And this apparatus is better the more consumers it is able to turn into producers–that is, readers or spectators into collaborators.

–Walter Benjamin, “The Author as Producer,” 1934.

In writing the above quotations, Walter Benjamin was interested in identifying the qualities that mark a properly Marxist literary work. Even though the politics behind the writing of his article isn’t very popular nowadays, I am surprised that his essay doesn’t receive more attention than it does, given its seemingly prescient description of communication that is now possible with new information technologies.

At this point, I probably do not need to re-document how websites, blogs, and the ability of readers to share and respond to them have been recasting the way that popular media is produced and consumed. Traditional media outlets are struggling to figure out their role in this new economy of ideas and entertainment, and some media forms, such as newspapers, may not survive the recasting.

Instead, I am interested in how information technologies are recasting the author/publisher divide. New technologies have essentially reduced the costs associated with publishing to near zero, creating a situation where authors can cheaply and easily distribute their own work. Authors can make their own blogs, produce an e-book for sale or giveaway, or publish a printed book using print-on-demand (POD), and they can do all of these things for free.

Of course, some of these free publishing venues have catches to them. While it is possible to create a print-on-demand book for free, the printer will take a fairly big percentage of any sales of the book. And some free blog hosting sites will insert their own ads onto the pages of authors. The larger point, however, is that traditional publishers no longer hold exclusive keys to the production of creative works.

Nor do these publishers hold a monopoly on distribution and marketing. Blogs, of course, are available to anyone with an internet connection, but even independently published e-books and POD books can now appear on Amazon.com and other popular online book sellers, right next to titles distributed by big publishing houses.

There still may be good reasons for authors to publish their work through third-party publishers, but the line that used to keep author and publisher apart is beginning to blur. We are beginning to enter the age of the “Author as Publisher.”