Week 0. Welcome to PUB401
Sept 7. Setting the stage, course expectations, assignments and exams, and other details.
Week 1. Books, Markets, Readers
Sept 14. Establishing a starting context by exploring the traditional world of books, publishing, and mass literacy—and their role in modern societies.
Reading: Carla Hesse. 1997. “Books in Time.” from The Future of the Book. edited by Geoffrey Nunberg. Berkeley: University of California Press. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/HistoryWired/Hesse/HesseBooksInTime.html
Week 2. Modern Book Markets Today
Sept 21. A look at the challenges and dynamics shaping the book industry today; after over a century of relative stability, we are seeing unprecedented challenges.
Readings:
Sara Lloyd. 2008 “A Book Publisher’s Manifesto for the 21st Century.” The Digitalist (Pan MacMillan), http://thedigitalist.net/?p=155
Hugh McGuire. 2010. “Sifting Through All These Books.” Tools of Change for Publishing (O’Reilly Media).
http://toc.oreilly.com/2010/06/sifting-through-all-these-book.html
Chris Anderson. 2004. “The Long Tail.” Wired 12 (10). http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html
Ewan Morrison. 2011. “Are books dead, and can authors survive?” guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/22/are-books-dead-ewan-morrison
James Bradley. 2011. “Are books dead?” city of tongues. http://cityoftongues.com/2011/08/25/are-books-dead/
Week 3. Ebooks in the Popular Imagination: 1968–2011
Sept 28. A brief history of thinking about the electronic book, beginning in the late 1960s with Alan Kay’s Dynabook concept; the rise of hypertext and the Internet; early ebook ventures in the 1990s; and the advent of reader devices in the 2000s.
Readings:
Alan C. Kay. 2000. Dynabooks Past, Present, and Future. Library Quarterly, 70(3), 385-395.
Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org
IDPF Stats on Ebook Sales: http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/industrystats.htm
Week 4. Google, Amazon, Apple: The Internet Business Model
Oct 5. A massive game is underway to determine how we consume culture in the 21st century. Close to the heart of this is the book, with corporate giants like Google, Amazon, and Apple jockeying for position to gain a dominant position in the markets of the near future.
Readings:
Peter Brantley. 2010. “Eye to Eye: The Author’s Guild, Random House, and GBS.” Shinemawa blog. http://peterbrantley.com/eye-to-eye-228
James Grimmelmann. 2011. “Google Books Settlement, 2008-2011″ The Laboratorium. http://laboratorium.net/archive/2011/08/17/google_books_settlement_2008-2011
Douglas Rushkoff. 2010 “Chapter V: Scale” in Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. OR Books. ch 5
Mike Shatzkin. 2011. “Publishing is Living in a World Not of its Own Making.” The Shatzkin Files. http://www.idealog.com/blog/publishing-is-living-in-a-world-not-of-its-own-making
Week 5. Copyright and Digital Media
Oct 12. A discussion of the charged and problematic nature of copyright—a legal instrument designed with print in mind—in the digital era, and an examination of digital rights management strategies. To what extent is copyright essential to publishing?
Readings:
Tim O’Reilly. 2002. “Piracy is Progressive Taxation.” O’Reilly P2P. http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2002/12/11/piracy.html
Steve Kolowich. 2011. “Fair Use Face-Off, Canadian Edition.” Inside Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/29/a_debate_over_fair_use_rights_and_copyright_expenses_in_canada
Michael Bhaskar. 2009. “DRM is Not Evil.” The Digitalist. http://thedigitalist.net/?p=624 and followups: http://thedigitalist.net/?p=636
Margaret Stewart. 2010. “How YouTube Thinks About Copyright.” Ted Talks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoX-YihV_ew
Brian O’Leary. 2010. “The Walls We Build Up.” Magellan Media. http://www.magellanmediapartners.com/index.php/mmcp/article/the_walls_we_build_up
Week 6. The Fate of Reading: Online and Offline
Oct 19. Does anyone actually read anymore? What’s happened to newspapers? Will the same thing happen to magazines and books?
Readings:
Vin Crosbie. 2008. “Transforming American Newspapers – part 2″
http://rebuildingmedia.corante.com/archives/2008/08/24/transforming_american_newspapers_part_2.php
National Endowment for the Arts. 2009. Reading on the Rise. http://www.nea.gov/research/ReadingonRise.pdf
Clay Shirky. 2009. “The Collapse of Complex Business Models.” http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-models/
Denis G. Pelli & Charles Bigelow. 2009. “A Writing Revolution” Seed Magazine. http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/a_writing_revolution/
Week 7. Fanfic and online audiences
Oct 26. Literature and audiences manifesting online; to be informed by any large announcements that may happen in October.
Mid-term exam.
Week 8. EBooks in 2011
Nov 2. A look at the contemporary state of the art of the ebook.
Readings:
Mike Shatzkin. 2011. “Publishing is Living in a World Not of its Own Making.” The Shatzkin Files. http://www.idealog.com/blog/publishing-is-living-in-a-world-not-of-its-own-making
Carolyn McNeillie. 2011. “An Introduction to HTML and CSS for EPUB.” EBound Canada. http://prezi.com/1jest0cxt2hp/an-introduction-to-html-and-css-for-epub/
Week 9. Devices, Specialized and General
Nov 9. Everyone’s favourite topic: gadgets. A critical examination of the reading experience as realized through various hardware formats, from scrolls to codex to screen.
Group research project launch.
Reading:
Stephen Windwalker. 2010. “Survey Results on Kindle Owner Demographics” Kindle Nation Daily (blog). Feb 18, 2010. http://kindlehomepage.blogspot.com/2010/02/more-from-winter-2010-kindle-nation.html
Week 10. Emerging Trends: Social Reading
Nov 16. The rise and fall of the encyclopedia and reference publishing; the rise of an electronic textbook market; online markets for genre fiction; are there clear trends?
Reading: Any and all from Books in Browsers 2011 (and YouTube videos)
Week 11. Challenges for 2012
Nov 23. A consideration of the idea of the “networked book” and related conceptual innovations in books and publishing.
Week 12. Group research project presentations
Nov 30. Groups present on their research in class. Final wrap-up.
