Jamie Rand: Blog Post 3

Discuss any of the readings that we've read in this class (except the Module 1 reading, which you've already discussed). What resonated with you? What did you like or not like? Did anything fit particularly well with your work at the time, or change your mind about anything?

The article that resonated with me was Phillips' "Where is the Value in Publishing?" The article asks where that value lies in a world where anyone can publish anything. To be honest, the question caught my eye as a philosophical question, not an academic one, but the article brought up a number of excellent points. Where, exactly, is the value in print, when "The Internet provides not just a ready publication route, but also opportunities to add value that an individual author would find it difficult to match[?]" Since short stories and novels are my largest interest, I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to have webpage imbedded music for certain scenes. Or ambient sound. Or even certain dialogue or narration. The story becomes more than a story, then, making a synthesis of imagination and sensation. Is it even a story, if that happens?

In the article itself, I admired the fact that Phillips brought up both sides of the self-publishing debate: how with "online production and distribution" authors are spreading their work virally, but, on the other hand, how it "smacks of the vanity press." It's very much a conflict between the old ways and the new, and it will be intriguing to see how the battle resolves. (For my own part, I think things will eventually be Star Trek-esque, where almost everything is digital but for rare books.)

The article didn't really change my mind or answer my question, but like I said, that's a credit to its neutral stance on the issue. It did point out that publishers have to change their view of the "value-chain" in order to stay profitable, which made me consider something I probably should have thought about a long time ago: now is a bad time to be in the business of books.