PUB800 – FALL 2019
Text & Context: Publishing in Contemporary Culture
Syllabus for Fall 2019
Mondays 9:30am–12:30pm, rm 2290
John Maxwell, jmax@sfu.ca
http://tkbr.publishing.sfu.ca/pub800
Description
This course is an examination of the significance, contemporary state, and developing trends in publishing, mostly from a Canadian perspective, across book, periodical, online, and scholarly forms.
As a seminar, PUB800 operates as a community of inquiry in which, through reading, writing, and discussing, we together build a collective understanding of publishing and its key issues. We will work largely in public: all written and presented work will reside on this website, which will grow to be the archive of our efforts. We will write, comment, and publish, and thereby actively shape our writing and reading contexts.
The recommended texts for this class are:
- Phillips, Angus, and Michael Bhaskar (eds). 2019. The Oxford Handbook of Publishing. Oxford University Press.
- Lorimer, Rowland. 2012. Ultra Libris: Policy, Technology, and the Creative Economy of Book Publishing in Canada. Toronto: ECW Press.
- Younging, Greg, 2017. Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing by and about Indigenous Peoples. Edmonton: Brush Education.
- Vermeer, Leslie, 2016. The Complete Canadian Book Editor. Edmonton: Brush Education.
A comprehensive reading list for the course can be found in our Zotero Bibliography (above, and at https://tkbr.publishing.sfu.ca/pub800/zotero-bibliography/)
As well, the “Pinboard Links” above, (collected at https://pinboard.in/u:tkbr/t:802/) collect interesting readings week to week as we move through the term.
You should also be following the following (as it were), as we will make reference to these over the course of the term:
- Quill and Quire – http://quillandquire.com/ (often requires password)
- Booknet Canada Blog – http://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/ (and newsletter)
- Mike Shatzkin: The Shatzkin Files – http://www.idealog.com/
- Publishing Research Quarterly – http://link.springer.com/journal/12109
- SFU Library’s Publishing information resources – http://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/research-assistance/subject/publishing
- @gaspereaupress on Instagram
Mechanics
PUB800 is a graduate seminar. We read, we write, and we discuss. We will annotate and gloss weekly readings using the Hypothes.is sytem. Collectively, we come to new understandings about issues and perspectives.
Each student will be responsible for a critial presentation and interrogation of a particular topic; we will negotiate the details and scheduling of these in the first two weeks of the term.
You will also write three short essays (1500–2000 words) on topics to be negotiated. Essays will be posted on the course website (which is publicly accessible), and peer-reviewed by your colleagues (peer reviews due one week after the essay deadlines).
Short Essay #1 Due Oct 7 – 20%
Short Essay #2 Due Oct 28 – 20%
Short Essay #3 Due Nov 25 – 20%
Seminar presentation: – 20%
Peer review participation – 10%
Class (and online) participation – 10%
Outline
This outline is provisional; it will evolve. Please refer to the PUB800 website for the latest version. See Zotero for the readings.
Week 1: Orientation
Introductions; the role of literature in society; the role of MPubbers in publishing; Hypothes.is and Zotero; the calling of the roll.
Readings:
– Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own;
– Homer: Iliad & Odyssey;
Week 2: Publishing is hard
Capital, publics, risk, scale, abundance, and other problems that must be overcome in order to achieve publication. (Lead: Nadya)
Readings:
– Stadler: What Is Publication? http://vimeo.com/14888791;
– Nash, “What Is the Business of Literature?”;
– Wenzel, “The Twelve Tasks of the Publisher”;
– Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics”;
– Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital”
– Phillips & Bhaskar, The Oxford Handbook of Publishing.
Week 3: Colonial, national, cultural policies
The roots of publishing, considered historically and critically; whiteness and nationalism; Colonization narratives, Decolonization stories, Indigenization stories. (Lead: Ash & Vishakha)
Readings:
– Lorimer, Ultra Libris, Chapter 2;
– Younging, The Elements of Indigenous Style;
– Reder & Sheild, “I Write This for All of You”;
– Smith, “Soup Cans and Love Slaves”;
– Worth, “This Library Takes an Indigenous Approach to Categorizing Books”;
– Akbar, “Diversity in Publishing – still hideously middle-class and white?”;
– Booknet Canada, “Further Reading: Demand for Diversity”
Week 4: The book trade in Canada
Tension between foreign-owned and domestic firms; pressures of a huge import market; cultural policy and structural support for both Canadian literature and Canadian industry. (Lead: Kankana & Hailey)
Readings:
– Lorimer, Ultra Libris, Chapter 4,5;
– ACP, “The Canadian English-Language Book Publishing Industry Profile: Final Report”;
– Ipsos, “Canadian Culture in a Digital World 2017”;
– MacSkimming, “Net Benefit: Canada’s Policy on Foreign Investment in the Book Industry”;
– Mason, “‘Capital Intraconversion’ and Canadian Literary Prize Culture”
– Lavoie, “Maple Leaves: Discovering Canada through the Published Record”
Week 5: Structure of the book industry
A larger look at the publishing industry, nationally and internationally; big and small; profitable and not. (Lead: Mahima & Melissa)
Readings:
– Wischenbart, “The Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry 2017”;
– BNC Research, “The Canadian Book Market 2018”;
– Booknet Canada, https://www.booknetcanada.ca;
– Theriault, “First, Do No Harm;”
– Bold, “An Accidental Profession”;
– Milliot & Deahl, “What’s the Matter with Fiction Sales”
October 14 is Thanksgiving Monday
Week 6: The transformation of retail
What the big-box stores of the 1990s began, Amazon has furthered. The shape of (book) retail today. (Lead: Ryann & Emily)
Readings:
– Shatzkin, “A changing book business”;
– Shatzkin, “A lot has changed”;
– Clark and Young, “Amazon”;
– Maxwell, “Amazon and the Engagement Economy”;
Week 7: Copyright
Copyright law (and practice) underpins much of the publishing world. Copyright thinking has been in flux over the past two decades. Canadian copyright law embodies the struggles for clarity in how we think about copyright in a digital world. (Lead: Katia, Paige)
Readings:
– Hesse, “The Rise of Intellectual Property”;
– Ruimy, “Statutory Review of the Copyright Act: Report of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology”;
– Dabrusin, “Shifting Paradigms: Report of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage”
– Anderson, “Québec’s Copibec Opens the Newest Challenge”
Week 8: Scholarly publishing
Scholarly publishing is something of a vanguard, where technological innovation, creative disruption, and radically polarized thinking about intellectual property result is an incredible volatile space, from massive multinationals down right down to agile startups. (Lead: Anastacia)
Readings:
– Larivière et al. “The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era”;
– Hinchliffe, “Advancing an Integrated Vertical Stack”;
– Priem & Hemminger, “Decoupling the scholarly journal”;
– Piwowar et al., “The State of OA”;
– Daniel et al, “Library Acquisition Patterns”
November 11 is Remembrance Day
Week 9: (Dis)/inter/mediation
The ebook and the rise of self-publishing; the ‘dark side’ of the market; the problems of abundance; ‘disintermediation’ in audio and other media; are libraries mediators or disintermediators? (Lead: Lauren, Amy J)
Readings:
– Wischenbart, “Global Ebook 2017 Report”;
– Jeong, “How a cabal of romance writers cashed in on Amazon Kindle Unlimited”
– Potash, “Thoughts from a Digital Advocate”;
– Q&Q, “Inside the war between Canadian libraries and multinational publishers”;
– Fiesler, “Why AO3’s Surprise Hugo Nomination is Such a Big Deal”;
Week 10: Periodical publishing today
Traditional models for magazines and periodicals; decline of advertising revenues; audience dynamics and strategies. (Lead: Lakota)
Readings:
– Madrigal, “A Day in the Life of a Digital Editor”;
– Fischer, “Axios Media Trends”;
– Narang, “Notes From The Underground”;
– Hardes, “The Events Model”;
– Owen, “The long, complicated, and extremely frustrating history of Medium”
Week 11
TBA