Digitise or die: what is the future of the book?

Queen Elizabeth Hall, South Bank Centre, London

Margaret Atwood, Andrew O'Hagan, Stephen Page & Erica Wagner
Digitise or Die: What is the Future of the Book?
Tuesday 17 April 2007, 7:30 P.M.

'What is the future of the book? Authors Margaret Atwood, Andrew O'Hagan and Erica Wagner and publisher Stephen Page, Chief Executive of Faber & Faber, discuss the brave new world of authors, readers and publishers in the age of new technology.'

Comments

[Stephen Willey]

I don't know about you, but whenever I get offered the choice between digitalization or death, death seems a tempting option. Not because digitalization is so alien to me that death is the only option I can envisage, but that the choice is actually so inane I do actually want to kill myself.
Poets since the oulipo have been considering the digital in relation to their work, JODI, MEZ, and London poets John Cayley and John Sparrow use code in a variety of ways, as aesthetic collage, as linguistic system, as executable as the language of poetry itself. I mean who is the command digitalize or die addressed to? And does the question have to be couched in such extreme terms?
Presumably one of the thoughts behind such a provocative statement is that spiraling publishing costs, a lack of readership, and blah blah blah, have made the printing poetry books economically unviable.
Well. 1) The book is not about to die. 2) Playing between the boundary of book and screen is extremely rich ground to be working on. 3) Poets who imagine such a sharp binary between page and screen, and who can only see death as an alternative to digitalization are probably dead already (Its like Bruce Sterling and William Gibson never happened).
Digitalization is not just the Internet; it is phone lines, city, faces, speech patterns, and bar codes. Books are not separate from the digital but operate inside it, are part of it.
Death only stares you in the face if you insist on imposing poetry and poets no one has heard of from the top down. Create your own community of readers from poets and friends you admire, publish chapbooks, and write.
Poetry does have a responsibility to address the digital simply because interesting poetry explores how language functions at the borders of linguistic sense, this most certainly happens in the shift between high and low level coding languages to the language which we read on a screen. However, these explorations can take place across a variety of different media, to make the binary digitalization or death seems slightly banal, though I’m sure it will fill the seats.
Anyway, one angry man signing off.

[Alex Davies]

I agree with your principles, especially the notion of moving away from top-down distribution and hierarchy. I think more than anything, the web will radically alter how poetry is distributed.

However, it's a worthwhile discussion. I think the title refers as much to the idea of embracing the digital as it does to making a choice between digital and print. Like you said, it is not a binary distinction, and to approach it as such would be as damaging as neglecting the digital altogether. Publishing is an industry, and as such it needs to be treated like a business. I think that the notion of "mainstream" publishing is one that will soon need to be reconsidered, but it's important for now that it establishes itself in the digital domain. Whilst it's all well and good to imagine communities of poets outside of the machine, it's an idea that is also in a similar period of transition, and in order to keep it vital and fresh, the mainstream publishing industry is a portal for the more adventurous writer to these communities. For most of us, like it or not, Waterstone's and Amazon are the kinds of places we begin our literary education, and I think it will remain that way for a long time. The publishing industry needs to make sure that it's embracing these new methods and forms of literature and its distribution so that future poets can use it as a stepping stone to more challenging work that really does interact with the digital in terms of language, form and concept.

In an ideal world, such mechanisms would not be in place, communities would be based around ideas instead of profit, and the notion of publishing conglomerates would be a thing of the past. Unfortunately this is not the case, so from a pragmatic viewpoint, I think it's a good thing that the publishing industry is attempting to think about the future, regardless of how prosaic, crass or misguided those attempts might be. It's better than ignorance.

[John]

Hey guys

I too find it fascinating and a little simplistic to dichotomize 'books vs digital'. As Stephen has already said, books are code too, and this really is the basis for any interesting discussion on what might be regard 'e-poetry'. Glazier's now classic but still important Digital Poetics book has managed to avoid the perils of becoming dated simply because its arguments recognize that computer code has its bases in language, as part of many post-structuralist paradigms.

I have Coupons≠Coupons on the brain right now as I just picked up BEAR$BAREBEAR$. As Jow Lindsey has noted in his introduction to their performance of this work (a video of the performance, including Jow's intro will feature in the forthcoming HOW2 issue) it is code work. And it is in more ways than one.

Firstly, it seems to have employed a computer algorithm or two to 'remix' itself and spew out language into a semi-sensical realm which promotes a rad improvisation with the textual material. Secondly, its general engagements with lists addresses a form, a structure, a code of interpretation which can be exploited. In the case of the former, I'd argue that the small booklet is an ideal way of housing something apparently opposite in nature to the 'organic bound book' whose separation is possibly bound by nostalgia more than anything else.

Then there's the fascinating work of Johanna Drucker, whose recognition of form as integral to meaning sees her using letterpress and book forms as constraints and direct conduits for meaning - codes again.

Cayley's work, as well as that of Brian Kim Stefans (although the two poets produce very distinct work) are so interesting to me because they too engage with digital media without needing to separate the digital from the page. I.e. I feel like, with both of these poets, there is no sense of ownership to one medium or another, but an essential balance of innovation from media old and new.

But back to the book debate, and I'm not sure whether this is a straightforward either/or debate or not. The title, which seems to paraphrase "Demo or Die" implies that without digitization, there's no way you'll stay afloat. From the perspective of many budding authors and publishers, this is true due to the costs and time strains of paper publishing. I think, however, that with new media, increasingly advanced internet technology, etc. the possibilities for chapbook / journal production on the page is being given new life. Make a PDF, give it to the world, let them print it themselves. I think it's interesting that as well as technology providing genuinely new and exciting modes of poetic enquiry, it can also project such enquiries back onto how we interact with 'older' media. Perhaps the book has new life after all?

Pip pip

J

[Alex]

John,

I think you're totally right when you say technology gives us the ability to direct modes of enquiry back at the book form itself - widespread self-publishing is a definite possibility in the near future. The challenge will be to get heard in the morass of constant change and rearrangement technology is packaged with. A publisher's role is not only to publish a work but to get it read, and publicity is a necessary evil. As our interaction with poetry alters as much as the modes of poetry itself, getting your work read will become more than half the battle.