As I read both Carr and Shirky over the past couple weeks—who both seek parallels between the rise of the internet and digital social media and the invention of the printing press in the 16th century—I couldn’t help thinking about medieval manuscripts.

Since the early 1990s, both medievalists and electronic media theorists have pointed to the hypertexted quality of medieval illuminated manuscripts in making complementary claims: medievalists to continuing cultural relevancy and electronic media theorists in continuity to literary tradition. The medieval books we admire so much today are distinguished by the remarkable visual images, in the body of a text and in the margins, that scholars have frequently compared to hypertexted images on internet “pages.”

The function of these images in illuminated manuscripts has no small bearing on the hypertext analogy. These “miniatures” (so named not because they were small—often they were not—but because they used red ink, or vermillion, the Latin word for which is minium) did not generally function as illustrations of something in the written text, but in reference to something beyond it. The patron of the volume might be shown receiving the completed book or supervising its writing. Or, a scene related to a saint might accompany a biblical text read on that saint’s day in the liturgical calendar without otherwise having anything to do with the scripture passage. Of particular delight to us today, much of the marginalia in illuminated books expressed the opinions and feelings of the illuminator about all manner of things—his demanding wife, the debauched monks in his neighborhood, or his own bacchanalian exploits.

Books of commentary, known as “glosses,” included conversations among different commentators across time that surrounded a central text, such as a Bible passage. The wisdom of the rabbis or Christian sages would be preserved through decades and centuries, with new commentators sometimes being added as successive copies were produced. Over time, the original contexts for these comments were forgotten and their relevance to the central text became obscure, so they became part of the interpretive project of reading a book. Often, the commentary became more significant than the central text itself.

see drescher

Smashwords Interview with Mark Coker

Joe Wikert : Tell us about Smashwords.

Mark Coker: Smashwords is a digital self-publishing site, kind of a hybrid publisher/online bookstore. We allow anyone anywhere to become a published ebook author simply by uploading their finished manuscript in Microsoft Word format, and then we automatically convert it into multiple DRM-free ebook formats.

JW: What was the impetus behind you founding the site?

MC: The idea grew out my own experience as an author. My wife and I co-wrote a novel a few years back, and despite being repped by one of the most respected literary agencies in Manhattan, no publisher would take the book. I found it frustrating that a publisher could stand between an author and their potential audience, especially in today's age where print on demand and the Internet are such forces for disintermediation.

JW: There are quite a few self-publishing outfits that handle the print side. Smashwords looks like a great approach for self-publishing in the e-book world. Is that how you've positioned the service?

MC: Yes, digital self publishing is our focus. We provide a platform for authors and even traditional publishers to publish and promote their books in digital form.

JW: What if someone wants to do both types of self-publishing, print and e-book? Are the rights set up so that authors can easily do both?

MC: Our publishing contract is non-exclusive, so we leave it to the author or the rights-holder to determine how and where they publish their book. I think in the future, most authors will become more independent-minded, and will begin to insist on controlling more and more of the rights for their works. This trend presents both a threat and an opportunity to publishers. Publishers who serve their authors the best will flourish.

JW: What's the financial model for an author considering Smashwords?

MC: I think most people agree that the traditional print publishing model fails to adequately compensate many authors. I blogged about this the other day. With Smashwords, we re trying to take a more author-centric approach. We give authors or publishers 85% of the net proceeds from each sale.
So the formula for the author's share = (sales price - transaction fee) * .85. By offering authors and content owners a bigger slice of the pie, we allow them to price their product lower yet still make higher per-unit margins than through print publishing. Lower prices increase consumer demand, and higher demand plus higher per-unit profits create a wonderfully disruptive win-win situation for consumers and content owners alike. The biggest challenge facing digital publishers is how to increase adoption rates for digital books. I'm confident digital books are destined to go mainstream with multi-billion dollar sales levels, yet clearly this is several years off.

JW: When an author publishes with Smashwords their content will be available in a variety of formats, including Amazon's Kindle. What are all the formats you offer and are authors able to pick and choose from this list, limiting their content to certain formats?

MC: Currently we offer Mobipocket, Palm PDB, .rtf, .txt, PDF, and two different online readers (HTML and Javascript). Authors decide which formats they want. PDF and .rtf are good if enjoyment of the book requires rigid adherence to a strict page layout. The other formats are best for straight form narrative. Our Smashwords Style Guide helps authors prep their work for optimal conversion.

JW: Authors can set their own pricing as well as determine how much of the content is freely readable before a customer has to pay. What's the upper limit on that free access feature?

MC: The upper limit for free access is 100% free, which we support. From a sampling perspective, the author or rights holder can set their sampling rate from 0% to 99%. If they set it at 60%, for example, as I did with my own book, the first 60% of the book's content is available for free online viewing through our online readers. Sampling is a critically important marketing technique, yet few authors or publishers take proper advantage of it in the digital realm. The thought process here is that we as authors or publishers are competing for the time and attention of our readers. If we earn their time and attention, the revenue will come. If a reader invests several hours to read the first 60% of your 300 page novel, odds are they'll want to buy the book to finish it.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -

PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

On-paper printing is not dead

It's not clear that on-paper textuality has exhausted its creative possibilities.

After all, it is not yet a thousand years old. As Elizabeth Eisenstein points out, on-paper printing is not a unifying technology at all: " Concepts relating to uniformity and to diversity -- to the typical and to the unique -- are interdependent, they represent two sides of the same coin. ...

The more standardized the type, indeed, the more compelling the sense of an idiosyncratic personal self."The on-paper text has a lot in common with hypertext in that it allows for a diverse range of practices within a set of fixed conventions. Hypertext allows for a new textuality in which some conventions -- the paper page, the author -- are replaced with other, original ones. Perhaps hypertext is a new set of textual conventions and not a new textual form.

M.R. Allen

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -

PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

From Ebooks to print now

At a time when most publishers are trying to anticipate the benefits of turning their backlists into e-books, two publishers have joined forces to buck the trend.

Humanities Ebooks LLP has enlisted the services of print publisher Troubador to do exactly the reverse. Through Troubador, the e-publishing company plans to make its backlist of academic titles available in print.

Whilst the ebooks are still available to buy and download from the Humanities Ebooks site (www.humanities-ebooks.co.uk) print versions of some of the titles are now available to buy, under the Humanities imprint, direct from Troubador, with many more titles to follow.
Troubador will eventually convert HEB's backlist of over 50 titles.

Managing Director of HEB, Dr Richard Gravil said:
"We've teamed up with Troubador because we want to provide our customers with maximum choice. The books produced by Troubador will complement what we already offer and allow us to reach a larger readership."
Jeremy Thompson, Managing Director of Troubador Publishing, said: "This collaboration has allowed both companies to maintain their focus on their respective areas of expertise whilst, at the same time, allowing us both to branch out into an exciting new area. I look forward to seeing how the relationship develops."

The Humanities Ebooks titles are available to buy in print from Troubador's website at www.troubador.co.uk/shop.asp

If you would like more information please contact Julia Fuller at Troubador Publishing, by email at julia_fuller@troubador.co.uk or by phone on 07870 864779

http://www.troubador.co.uk/shop_booklist.asp?category=Humanities%20Ebooks

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -

PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Shifting boundaries

Electronic linking shifts the boundaries between one text and another as well as between the author and the reader and between and the teacher and the student.

It also has radical effects upon our experience of author, text, and work, redefining each. Its effects are so basic, so radical, that it reveals that many of our most cherished, most commonplace, ideas and attitudes toward literature and literary production turn out to be the result of that particular form of information technology and technology of cultural memory that has provided the setting for them.

This technology -- that of the printed book and its close relations, which include the typed or printed page -- engenders certain notions of authorial property, authorial uniqueness, and a physically isolated text that hypertext makes untenable. The evidence of hypertext, in other words, historicizes many of our most commonplace assumptions, thereby forcing them to descend from the ethereality of abstraction and appear as corollary to a particular technology rooted in specific times and places.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts