Thursday
Apr232009
The iPod Moment
Thursday 23 April, 2009
Thanks to those who commented on the online publishing post. Further to that, here's the chief executive of HarperCollins talking about digital publishing:
The dull remainder of the article can be found here. It's perturbing that the chief executive of HarperCollins thinks that publishing is late to the party.
Putting aside digital poetics for the time being, the focus on the practicalities of online publishing is driven entirely by the requirement of profit. The idea of there having to be an 'iPod moment' for books, where one device replaces all of our print needs thus far is ridiculous. Music is completely separate in its mode of distribution from printed work. Music is primarily experienced on one dominating format at a time, with transition periods where forthcoming superior formats compete for supremacy. We are on the cusp of completing the transition from CDs to digital music, with awful crap like the SACD and MiniDisc consigned to geek-wank Wikipedia history.
Print is different. Print exists on the page but the page exists as an entity which can occupy nearly any dimensions print requires of it. From a leaflet to a pamphlet to a chapbook to a collection to an anthology - print can occupy these spaces because the physical object of the codex is flexible and convenient enough to accomodate these form factors. Having an 'iPod moment' for print would mean reducing these, in many ways, fundamental freedoms to a single form factor. With music, the medium the music is carried on is not a primary concern because the delivery of the music itself is always, within certain boundaries, the same. Print does not function in this way, and it will never function in this way. Thinking only of poetry, for example, most of my favourite and admired poets think long and hard about the form their poem is presented in. In fact, I think you could make a good case for saying that your poem is not a poem until you have factored in those considerations. Taking as an example James Davies's latest edition of if p then q, a blue tube filled with posters - this is still poetry, and the form is vital to the reading experience, but there would be no way to adequately replicate that experience on a device which was intended to also cater for the reading experience of the latest Salt publication.
What we are seeing at the moment is a demand for a transitory period the likes of which music has encountered several times in the last century. There is an expectation that print and online publishing are foes, and that print will eventually be vanquished by its new rival. But this is simply not the case at all. Online publishing is simply another form of print, an extension of the codex into an arena that was never expected even two decades ago. In order for it to be used to its full potential, we have to recognise that the digital environment is at once an extension of and a negation of the formal ideas of constraint and freedom present on the page. We must transmute our theoretical concerns of the page on to the screen and then extend them to accomodate the newness the online environment affords us.
Sites like Lulu allow self-publishing by almost anyone - in fact The Other Room Anthology was published with exactly that technology. Likewise, the proliferation of blogs allows for the establishment of online communities with spaces for open dialogues, as well as the possibility of more guarded and closed environments such as listservs where people are free to air thoughts and ideas with the understanding that those thoughts and ideas might still be developing. As Bill Drennan says:
Print is expanding at a rate that would simply not be possible in the physical codex, because the majority of physical books are dependent on methods of economy and profit or, in the case of much good poetry now, small print runs of poetry existing within a coterie. The online environment allows for the categories of distribution to mingle.
I hope the 'iPod moment' never comes for print. The idea of having an A5-sized screen that I carry everywhere that contains everything I am going to read for that day or week fills me with dread, not because I dislike the idea of screen reading but because I dislike the idea of that kind of physical constraint. Just because something is published online it doesn't mean the physical experience of reading it shouldn't be taken into account. For instance, I much prefer my iPhone to my laptop as a means of reading text, and I have actually got through a couple of novels on it. But that's because the novel as a form does not differ too radically from the iPhone's screen - you are focussing on a single page at a time and the turning of the page, while not physically identical, is accurate enough to replicate the feel of the form. I can't imagine the latest issue of if p then q on my phone being anywhere near as enjoyable. It would feel incomplete.
The solution is a simple one. Let things get messy. The printed word is enjoying a freedom that could not be imagined a generation ago. The reductive angst that is now taking place amongst the mainstream publishing industry can be left to them (for more on this I would recommend reading Amy De'Ath's and Matt Dalby's comments left in the aforementioned thread). Soon they will have their iPod and you will be able to carry all your novels in your pocket with you. I'm personally looking forward to checking Ron Silliman's blog on my RSS reader, reading the poetry collected by Sophie Robinson on T H E D A I L Y F I L T H blog, reading a bit of Jules Verne on my iPhone, spending some time flicking through Klatch magazine and watching some poetry on UbuWeb. While listening to my iPod.
It all sounds rather like the problems of the music industry. So could book publishing end up in the same position? "Yes, that's a risk. Luckily they've gone first," Barnsley laughs. "We can learn a little bit from them and I deliberately hired a COO [chief operating officer] from the music industry because I thought I wanted to know all the mistakes they made ... I think we do have an advantage in being a little bit late to the digital party." And perhaps in having a rather different product. "Nobody loved a CD," she says, referring to the affection for books as objects as well as for the words.
The dull remainder of the article can be found here. It's perturbing that the chief executive of HarperCollins thinks that publishing is late to the party.
Putting aside digital poetics for the time being, the focus on the practicalities of online publishing is driven entirely by the requirement of profit. The idea of there having to be an 'iPod moment' for books, where one device replaces all of our print needs thus far is ridiculous. Music is completely separate in its mode of distribution from printed work. Music is primarily experienced on one dominating format at a time, with transition periods where forthcoming superior formats compete for supremacy. We are on the cusp of completing the transition from CDs to digital music, with awful crap like the SACD and MiniDisc consigned to geek-wank Wikipedia history.
Print is different. Print exists on the page but the page exists as an entity which can occupy nearly any dimensions print requires of it. From a leaflet to a pamphlet to a chapbook to a collection to an anthology - print can occupy these spaces because the physical object of the codex is flexible and convenient enough to accomodate these form factors. Having an 'iPod moment' for print would mean reducing these, in many ways, fundamental freedoms to a single form factor. With music, the medium the music is carried on is not a primary concern because the delivery of the music itself is always, within certain boundaries, the same. Print does not function in this way, and it will never function in this way. Thinking only of poetry, for example, most of my favourite and admired poets think long and hard about the form their poem is presented in. In fact, I think you could make a good case for saying that your poem is not a poem until you have factored in those considerations. Taking as an example James Davies's latest edition of if p then q, a blue tube filled with posters - this is still poetry, and the form is vital to the reading experience, but there would be no way to adequately replicate that experience on a device which was intended to also cater for the reading experience of the latest Salt publication.
What we are seeing at the moment is a demand for a transitory period the likes of which music has encountered several times in the last century. There is an expectation that print and online publishing are foes, and that print will eventually be vanquished by its new rival. But this is simply not the case at all. Online publishing is simply another form of print, an extension of the codex into an arena that was never expected even two decades ago. In order for it to be used to its full potential, we have to recognise that the digital environment is at once an extension of and a negation of the formal ideas of constraint and freedom present on the page. We must transmute our theoretical concerns of the page on to the screen and then extend them to accomodate the newness the online environment affords us.
Sites like Lulu allow self-publishing by almost anyone - in fact The Other Room Anthology was published with exactly that technology. Likewise, the proliferation of blogs allows for the establishment of online communities with spaces for open dialogues, as well as the possibility of more guarded and closed environments such as listservs where people are free to air thoughts and ideas with the understanding that those thoughts and ideas might still be developing. As Bill Drennan says:
the main thing is to get the writing to work within the medium, as with books. but publishers usually take a long time to produce books, whereas online publishing is as immediate or ‘real time’ as you want to make it. you can also edit your own live material as much as you want.
Print is expanding at a rate that would simply not be possible in the physical codex, because the majority of physical books are dependent on methods of economy and profit or, in the case of much good poetry now, small print runs of poetry existing within a coterie. The online environment allows for the categories of distribution to mingle.
I hope the 'iPod moment' never comes for print. The idea of having an A5-sized screen that I carry everywhere that contains everything I am going to read for that day or week fills me with dread, not because I dislike the idea of screen reading but because I dislike the idea of that kind of physical constraint. Just because something is published online it doesn't mean the physical experience of reading it shouldn't be taken into account. For instance, I much prefer my iPhone to my laptop as a means of reading text, and I have actually got through a couple of novels on it. But that's because the novel as a form does not differ too radically from the iPhone's screen - you are focussing on a single page at a time and the turning of the page, while not physically identical, is accurate enough to replicate the feel of the form. I can't imagine the latest issue of if p then q on my phone being anywhere near as enjoyable. It would feel incomplete.
The solution is a simple one. Let things get messy. The printed word is enjoying a freedom that could not be imagined a generation ago. The reductive angst that is now taking place amongst the mainstream publishing industry can be left to them (for more on this I would recommend reading Amy De'Ath's and Matt Dalby's comments left in the aforementioned thread). Soon they will have their iPod and you will be able to carry all your novels in your pocket with you. I'm personally looking forward to checking Ron Silliman's blog on my RSS reader, reading the poetry collected by Sophie Robinson on T H E D A I L Y F I L T H blog, reading a bit of Jules Verne on my iPhone, spending some time flicking through Klatch magazine and watching some poetry on UbuWeb. While listening to my iPod.
Reader Comments (2)
nobody loved a cd, truer words never said
sounds like they're trying to kill two stones with one bird
I loved a CD reciprocally.