Engl 30813, The Business of Books

Williams, Spring 2013

                       

The Business of Books:

The Past, Present, and Future of Print Production and Consumption

            A room without books is like a body without a soul.  --Cicero

    The medium is the message.  –Marshall McLuhan

This course will examine the history of reading, writing, and books from the perspectives of both producers and consumers.  Beginning with discussions of orality and writing’s origins, the course will offer a historical survey of print culture since Gutenberg, examining the social and cultural significance of print as a mass media capable of shaping human attitudes.  With the development of moveable type and the printing press in the fifteenth century, human culture experienced profound shifts in every facet of experience.  With advances in technology and the explosive growth of literacy and literary marketplaces during the nineteenth century, human culture was again profoundly changed.  Today with the advent of a new digital media, human culture is experiencing an equally profound shift.  As readers move from the printed page to the computer screen, all areas of traditional print culture are changing as well, including even the most basic concepts of what it means to be a writer, reader, and publisher.  As traditional book production transitions into radical new concepts and forms, this course will conclude with discussions of future literacies.

This particular section will make use of TCU Press and its unique resources as a learning laboratory, providing an inside view of the publishing business as it moves from a traditional business model (based on retail bookstore sales) into an entirely new digital model (based on social media and online sales).  Also, as an academic class intended to enhance critical skills, the course will require students to keep journals, write brief descriptions of their observations and perceptions, participate in online class discussions, and take mid-term and final exams.

This course is offered as part of the Coleman Fellows Program and the James A. Ryffel Center for Entrepreneurial Studies Program in the Neeley School of Business.

T, 1/15

Introduction

Th, 1/17

The Past and Future of Reading?

T, 1/22

Reader Interviews

Th, 1/24

Reader Interviews

T, 1/29

The Book, Chapter 2, 27-54

Th, 1/31

The Book, Chapter 3, 54-86

T, 2/5

The Book, Chapter 4, 87-112

Th, 2/7

The Book, Chapter 5, 113-138

T, 2/12

The Book, Chapter 6, 139-158

Th, 2/14

The Concept of the Author

T, 2/19

Author Interviews

Th, 2/21

Author Interviews

T, 2/26

Introduction to Book History, Chapter 2, 28-43

Th, 2/28

Introduction to Book History, Chapter 3, 44-65

T, 3/05

Introduction to Book History, Chapter 4, 66-84

Th, 3/07

in-class mid-term

T, 3/12

Spring Break

Th, 3/14

Spring Break

T, 3/19

Melinda Esco, Production Manager, TCU Press

Th, 3/21

Kathy Walton, Editor, TCU Press

T, 3/26

Introduction to Book History, Chapter 6, 100-117

Th, 3/28

Print Is Dead, “Stop the Presses,” 1-66

T, 4/02

Print Is Dead, “Totally Wired,” 67-134

Th, 4/04

Print Is Dead, “Saying Goodbye to the Book,” 134-193

T, 4/09

Publisher/Bookstore Employee Interviews

Th, 4/11

Publisher/Bookstore Employee Interviews

T, 4/16

Introduction to Book History, Chapter 7, 118-132

Th, 4/18

“The Digital Revolution,” from John B. Thompson’s Merchants of Culture

T, 4/23

Final Presentations

Th, 4/25

Final Presentations

T, 4/30

Final Presentations

Course Requirements:

1)    Blogging: To document your reading and research experiences, and as well to comment overall on your work in this course, you are required to keep an online journal or weblog.  With the help of technology at Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), you will build your own web log, or “blog,” and keep an electronic journal of your experiences as a reader and more generally as an individual reflecting on the literacy revolutions.  You will be expected to write a minimum of 8 brief (1- to 2-page) responses. What you write is up to you.  You do not have to attempt a critical analysis of the assigned texts, but I encourage you to reflect on your experiences as a reader reading about textual production and reading. I would like you to comment on what your reading experiences were like.  What happened when you sat down and opened up a book or text?  How—and why--did you respond to what you read?  In addition to reflecting on your experiences as a reader, I would also like to reflect on what you are learning, both in our class and your other classes.  I would like you to keep a record of what was valuable, and what was less valuable.   Finally, and much more generally, you are encouraged to write about whatever moves you to write.  But please remember that a blog is not a personal—and private—diary.  You must post 4 blog entries before midterm, and 4 after midterm.

Blogging is a less formal form of writing than an essay, and thus blogs are a good

forum to reflect, analyze, vent, explore, and consider.  But blogs are also a more

public form of writing and, because of the technology, an excellent way of sharing,

collaborating, and responding.  In addition to posting your own blog entries, you will

also be required to post 8 brief responses of around a paragraph to half page to

other course blogs throughout the semester.  You are welcome to comment on any

of the other course blogs, but please vary the blogs you respond to.  Please do not

respond to the same blog (and person).

Please keep in mind that blogs are a public forum, accessible to anyone who has

internet access, so please do not post anything that you would not share with the

classroom and internet communities.

Since this is a new course, we will use our course blogs as an open dialogue to reflect

on our experiences in this course.

The minimum requirement? 8 blog entries (1 to 2 page journals) and 8

(paragraph to a page) responses to other course blogs.  You may write more, but

this is the minimum.

I will not respond to every blog, but I will read all entries and respond every so often.

2)    Three Interviews:  At three different times during the semester you will be asked to conduct interviews and then come back to class to present what you have learned from your interviews.  These interviews may be undertaken individually or in a small group.  Early in the semester you will be asked to interview 4 readers (These I perceive as more surveys than interviews).  As we proceed in the semester, you will then be asked to interview an author, and finally a publisher, editor, or book designer, or bookseller.  For the reader surveys, I would like a 1 to 2-page synopsis of your findings.  The final three interviews (author, publisher, and bookseller) must either be videotaped or sound recorded, and by the last day of class—at the latest!—you must turn in a transcription of your interviews.  The last class is the last possible day I will accept your transcriptions, but I strongly encourage you to submit them earlier!  Please do not wait until the final two weeks to transcribe three interviews! 

3)    Exams:  There will be midterm and final exams.  Each exam will consist of two parts, a take-home essay section and an in-class brief description section. 

4)    Final Presentations:  For your final assignment, I would like you to put together a multimodal project that presents a reflection of your semester’s research and learning—your final thoughts, observations, and ponderings of your experiences as a student of book culture throughout the semester. Consider what you have learned that was interesting, striking, or memorable.  These projects may include photographs, videos, sketches, recordings, music, prose, and poetry. You may use Power Point or present a video, or use other forms of multimodal presentation.  Please be as creative as you like.  As with the lead respondent assignments, please consider how to engage your audience’s attention.  Along with your presentation, you must submit a 1- to 2-page explanation and justification of your presentation.  These projects may be done individually or in small groups (maximum of 3).  If done as a group project, each person's individual contributions must be apparent.

5)    Short Writing Assignments:  Students will often be asked to write a brief response in class to a specific question or quotation.  These responses will be used to stimulate discussions and, while they will not be formally graded, they will be collected and receive some credit (a √, a √+, a √-, or 0 credit).

.

6)    Class Attendance and Participation:  For my own records I will take attendance, but I am not formally setting an attendance policy.  You are responsible for your own attendance.  I caution you, however, to keep in mind that in-class writing assignments and in-class activities cannot be made up or turned in late.  Also, I caution you to keep in mind that you are required to participate in class discussions and to contribute to the class’s success.  Your participation and contributions will make a difference in deciding borderline grades.

7)    Familiarity with the Texts:  This is the most important requirement.  A reading knowledge of the assigned texts is expected and essential.  Failure to demonstrate a familiarity with the assigned texts (whether in discussion or in writing) will result in low grades.  Please read the assigned texts.

8)    A Sense of Humor and an Appreciation of Irony:  I also ask for your patience, understanding, and good humor.  I sincerely wish that all of us enjoy our work together, and I ask for your help in making this course a success.  The more we enjoy what we are doing, the more we will get out of the course.

Finally, I take pride in working closely with students.  I will make myself available whenever necessary.  If you have questions or problems with this course or your general

studies, please let me know,

Grading Scale:

            Blogs                                                               20%

            Interviews                                                        30% (10% each)

            Midterm exam                                                 10%

            Final exam                                                       10%

            In-class Writing/Activites                                10%

            Final Presentations                                          20%

           

Dan Williams

Reed 414D, TCU Press

#6250 (Reed), #5907 (TCU Press)

d.e.williams@tcu.edu

Office hours: Fridays, 10 AM to Noon, and by appointment.  Please verify where I am holding office hours before trying to locate me.  I am most often found at TCU Press, located at 3000 Sandage on the far eastern edge of campus.

Required Texts:

1. Introduction to Book History, Finkelstein and McCleery

2. The Book: Life Story of A Technology, Nicole Howard

3. Print Is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age, Jeff Gomez

Academic Conduct:

An academic community requires the highest standards of honor and integrity in all of its participants if it is to fulfill its missions. In such a community faculty, students, and staff are expected to maintain high standards of academic conduct. The purpose of this policy is to make all aware of these expectations. Additionally, the policy outlines some, but not all, of the situations which can arise that violate these standards. Further, the policy sets forth a set of procedures, characterized by a "sense of fair play," which will be used when these standards are violated. In this spirit, definitions of academic misconduct are listed below. These are not meant to be exhaustive.

I. ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

Any act that violates the spirit of the academic conduct policy is considered academic misconduct. Specific examples include, but are not limited to:

A. Cheating. Includes, but is not limited to:

1. Copying from another student's test paper, laboratory report, other report, or computer files and listings.

2. Using in any academic exercise or academic setting, material and/or devices not authorized by the person in charge of the test.

3. Collaborating with or seeking aid from another student during an academic exercise without the permission of the person in charge of the exercise.

4. Knowingly using, buying, selling, stealing, transporting, or soliciting in its entirety or in part, the contents of a test or other assignment unauthorized for release.

5. Substituting for another student, or permitting another student to substitute for oneself, in a manner that leads to misrepresentation of either or both students work.

B. Plagiarism. The appropriation, theft, purchase, or obtaining by any means another's work, and the unacknowledged submission or incorporation of that work as one's own offered for credit. Appropriation includes the quoting or paraphrasing of another's work without giving credit therefore.

C. Collusion. The unauthorized collaboration with another in preparing work offered for credit.

D. Abuse of resource materials. Mutilating, destroying, concealing, or stealing such materials.

E. Computer misuse. Unauthorized or illegal use of computer software or hardware through the TCU Computer Center or through any programs, terminals, or freestanding computers owned, leased, or operated by TCU or any of its academic units for the purpose of affecting the academic standing of a student.

F. Fabrication and falsification. Unauthorized alteration or invention of any information or citation in an academic exercise. Falsification involves altering information for use in any academic exercise. Fabrication involves inventing or counterfeiting information for use in any academic exercise.

G. Multiple submission. The submission by the same individual of substantial portions of the same academic work (including oral reports) for credit more than once in the same or another class without authorization.

H. Complicity in academic misconduct. Helping another to commit an act of academic misconduct.

I. Bearing false witness. Knowingly and falsely accusing another student of academic misconduct.

Disabilities Statement:

Texas Christian University complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 regarding students with disabilities.  Eligible students seeking accommodations should contact the Coordinator of Services for Students with Disabilities in the Center for Academic Services located in Sadler Hall, 11.  Accommodations are not retroactive, therefore, students should contact the Coordinator as soon as possible in the term for which they are seeking accommodations. Further information can be obtained from the Center for Academic Services, TCU Box 297710, Fort Worth, TX 76129, or at (817) 257-7486.

Adequate time must be allowed to arrange accommodations and accommodations are not retroactive; therefore, students should contact the Coordinator as soon as possible in the academic term for which they are seeking accommodations.  Each eligible student is responsible for presenting relevant, verifiable, professional documentation and/or assessment reports to the Coordinator.  Guidelines for documentation may be found at http://www.acs.tcu.edu/DISABILITY.HTM.

Students with emergency medical information or needing special arrangements in case a building must be evacuated should discuss this information with their instructor/professor as soon as possible.

IDEOLOGY: DEFINITIONS & APPROACHES
(TERRY EAGLETON'S LIST)

Here is a list of ways the concept of ideology has been treated in recent decades, according to Terry Eagleton. Note that this is more up-to-date than most lists. You will see some overlap or similarities with my list, but this one more readily identifies a variety of more refined and elaborated positions by various thinkers.

a) the process of production of meanings, signs and value in social life;
b) a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class;
c) ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
d) false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
e) systematically distorted communication;
f) that which offers a position for a subject;
g) forms of thought motivated by social interests;
h) identity thinking;
i) socially necessary illusion;
j) the conjuncture of discourse and power;
k) the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world;
l) action-oriented sets of beliefs;
m) the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality;
n) semiotic closure;
o) the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relation to a social structure;
p) the process whereby said life is converted to a natural reality.

Signifier and Signified

  

Description

Saussure's 'theory of the sign' defined a sign as being made up of the matched pair of signifier and signified.

Signifier

The signifier is the pointing finger, the word, the sound-image.

A word is simply a jumble of letters. The pointing finger is not the star. It is in the interpretation of the signifier that meaning is created.

Signified

The signified is the concept, the meaning, the thing indicated by the signifier. It need not be a 'real object' but is some referent to which the signifier refers.

The thing signified is created in the perceiver and is internal to them. Whilst we share concepts, we do so via signifiers.

Whilst the signifier is more stable, the signified varies between people and contexts.

The signified does stabilize with habit, as the signifier cues thoughts and images.

Discussion

The signifier and signified, whilst superficially simple, form a core element of semiotics.

Saussure's ideas are contrary to Plato's notion of ideas being eternally stable. Plato saw ideas as the root concept that was implemented in individual instances. A signifier without signified has no meaning, and the signified changes with person and context. For Saussure, even the root concept is malleable.

The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary (Saussure called this 'unmotivated'). A real object need not actually exist 'out there'. Whilst the letters 'c-a-t' spell cat, they do not embody 'catness'. The French 'chat' is not identical to the English 'cat' in the signified that it creates (to the French, 'chat' has differences of meaning). In French, 'mouton' means both 'mutton' and a living 'sheep', whilst the English does not differentiate.

Saussure inverts the usual reflectionist view that the signifier reflects the signified: the signifier creates the signified in terms of the meaning it triggers for us. The meaning of a sign needs both the signifier and the signified as created by an interpreter. A signifier without a signified is noise. A signified without a signifier is impossible.

Language is a series of 'negative' values in that each sign marks a divergence of meaning betweens signs. Words have meaning in the difference and relationships with other words.

The language forms a 'conceptual grid', as defined by structural anthropologist Edmund Leach, which we impose on the world in order to make sense.

Lacan defined the unconscious as being structured like language and dealing with a shifting set of signifiers. When we think in words and images, these still signify: they are not the final signified, which appears as a more abstract sensation. In that we can never know the Real, the external signified can neither be truly known.

Jaques Derrida criticized the neat simplicity of signs. The signifier-signified is stable only if one term is final and incapable of referring beyond itself, which is not true. Meaning is deferred as you slide between signs.

Semiotics - Signifier\signified 

Saussure actually saw the division of the sign into sound image and concept as a bit ambiguous. So he refined the idea by saying it might make things clearer if we referred to the concept as the signified (signifié) and the sound image as the signifier (signifiant) - this idea is shown in the graphic, which attempts to show how the signifier and signified coalesce into what we call a sign.
It's worth taking a little time to consider the graphic so that you get it into your head. It's worth asking yourself as well whether you think it makes good sense and whether it's very useful.

Signifier<>signified relationship

Same sound image - different concepts?

You might think that the distinction between sound image (signifier) and concept (signified) doesn't get us very far forward in trying to figure out what we mean by 'meaning'. You're probably right. After all, it's no easier to say what the concept of 'the' or 'of' is than to say what thing those words correspond to. And, of course, I don't know if the concepts 'city', 'woman', 'man' in your head are the same as those in mine. As the British linguist, David Crystal, puts it:

Some words do have meanings which are relatively easy to conceptualise, but we certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say. Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which might come to mind when I use the word table is going to be the same as the one you, the reader, might bring to mind.

While that's quite correct, the fact remains that it also explains why Saussure's ideas took things forward. His notion of the sign places the emphasis on our individual 'concepts' corresponding to the sound images. Your mental picture of a car (indeed, for all I know, not only a mental picture, but also a mental smell, mental noise or whatever) will not be the same as mine, for a variety of reasons. (For a discussion of some of those reasons, see the section on Meaning).
Saussure shifted the emphasis from the notion that there is some kind of 'real world' out there to which we all refer in words which mean the same to all of us. Fairly obviously, we in our language community have much of this real world in common, otherwise we couldn't communicate, but, for various reasons, the 'real world' which we articulate through our signs will be different for every one of us. (It is for this reason that Saussure saw semiology as a branch of social psychology.)

Saussure stressed the arbitrariness of the sign as the first principle of semiology.
When we say something is 'arbitrary', we mean that there's no good reason for it. If you make an 'arbitrary choice' between two things, then you choose for no good reason; you probably don't care which one you choose. By saying that signs are arbitrary, Saussure was saying that there is no good reason why we use the sequence of sounds 'sister' to mean a female sibling. We could just as well use 'soeur', 'Schwester', 'ukht'. For that matter, we could just as well use the sequence of sounds: 'brother'. Of course, as he pointed out, we don't have any choice in the matter. If we want to talk about female siblings in the English language, we can talk about 'female siblings' or 'sisters' - and that's all; there are no more options. You can't do a Humpty Dumpty.
Saussure saw language as being an ordered system of signs whose meanings are arrived at arbitrarily by a cultural convention. There is no necessary reason why a pig should be called a pig. It doesn't look sound or smell any more like the sequence of sounds 'p-i-g' than a banana looks, smells, tastes or feels like the sequence of sounds 'banana'. It is only because we in our language group agree that it is called a 'pig' that that sequence of sounds refers to the animal in the real world. You and your circle of friends could agree always to refer to pigs as 'squerdlishes' if you want. As long as there is general agreement, that's no problem - until you start talking about squerdlishes to people who don't share the same convention.

Semiotics - Semiotics and culture

Saussure freely admits that when he is stressing the arbitrariness of the sign, he is stressing something which is actually fairly obvious. As he sees it, though, the problem is that people haven't paid enough attention to the implications of the fact that sign-systems are arbitrary.

Since it is the case that the codes (see Code) we use are the result of conventions arrived at by the users of those codes, then it is reasonable to suppose that the values of the users will in some way be incorporated into those codes. They will, for example, have developed signs for those things they agree to be important, they will probably have developed a whole array of signs to draw the distinctions between those things which are of particular significance in their culture.

In other words, you might reasonably expect that the ideologies prevalent in those cultures will have been incorporated into the codes used:

...'reality' is always encoded, or rather the only way we can perceive and make sense of reality is by the codes of our culture. There may be an objective, empiricist reality out there, but there is no universal, objective way of perceiving and making sense of it. What passes for reality in any culture is the product of the culture's codes, so 'reality' is always already encoded, it is never 'raw'.   

Semiologists generally prefer the term 'reader' to 'receiver' (even of a painting, photograph or film) and often use the term 'text' to 'message'. This implies that receiving a message (i.e. 'reading a text') is an active process of decoding and that that process is socially and culturally conditioned.