Blog Post 3-Jennifer Schrauth

Like Jamie, Angus Phillips' article, "Where is the Value in Publishing?," stuck with me and seemed most directly relevant to my position in the MFA department. Publishing is something every author has to think about. Sure, writing for yourself is swell, but that doesn't pay the bills, and eventually you long for some recognition. As Phillips points out in his article, the internet provides a relatively simple and painless way to publish original work, through websites like lulu.com as well as personal website, online portfolios, and even blogging software like blogger and wordpress, among others. And yet, despite this availability, authors still choose to get agents who will represent them to publishers and send their work to publishing houses.

Phillips' article talks a lot about value and the value chain. While he proves that internet publishing can be more profitable than print publication for a variety of reasons, the fact of the matter is that there is a lot of junk on the internet and people tend to be more willing to trust a hard copy or even an ebook representation rather than something that is only found online. That is not to say that everything that is published in print is of good quality nor that everything published online is of bad quality; it is to say that with print publication there is a review process which seems should result in a higher quality publication than online publishing, where anyone can publish just about anything themselves.

On the other hand, the online format does give the author more flexibility when it comes to multimodality and intertextuality. Hyperlinks allow authors to point readers toward relevant or supplemental resources and the digital format allows for the embedding of audio or video files, control over when readers are exposed to certain information, etc.

Ultimately, I don't think Phillips' article said anything to really sway my thinking toward or against online publication, but it did get me thinking about publishing in general and the pros and cons of each mode of publishing, which I think will be very useful.