Literary Markets / Literary Property

Anglistik, 2015

In his influential account of the rise of English literary studies, Terry Eagleton claims that literature is a key moral ideology for our post-secular modernity (1996, 27). The literary author's creative process provides an image of non-alienated labour, while the literary canon "appears as one of the few enclaves in which the creative values expunged from the face of English society by industrial capitalism can be celebrated and affirmed" (1996, 19). The idea that literature is an anti-industrial and non-alienated enclave is surprisingly tenacious. In her recent study of the battle between independent and chain bookstores, Laura Miller (2006) suggests the settled image of literary reading as something deeply humanizing and enlivening was activated by retailers resisting the rationalization threatened by big-box stores. They presented neighbourhoods supplied by "local" independents as holistic communities full of warm human beings eager to make connections with neighbours, whereas the big-box retailers were said to be suited only to strip-mall impersonality. They are all commercial enterprises, yet one side got to claim that encouraging the formation of authentic literary communities was primary amongst its lofty goals, while the other was presented as driven only by materialistic interests. Ted Striphas argues related points in his work on Amazon's expedient use of the idea that it is primarily a seller of good books. Literature's aura has been a clear cover for the company's real aims, which include revolutionizing the distribution of consumer goods-to be continued in a dramatic fashion when it starts using drones for deliveries-and affiliation with an elite roster of global technology and "digital utility" companies such as Google and Facebook. Striphas argues that via Kindle e-books in particular, Amazon has been working to turn the reading process into a "recordable, transmissible thing" (2010, 304)-a thing that can be mined and potentially used for productive processes like any other kind of user data. He connects these efforts to a broader transformation, in which "the widespread private ownership of saleable consumer goods" is giving way to the temporary licensing of intellectual properties via Digital Rights Management (DRM), and consumer capitalism is morphing into something that is-under banners of choice and interactivity-more controlled, patrolled, and delimited than ever before (Striphas 2009, 16). In this essay we comment briefly on how contemporary literary markets might be conceived in relation to the political-economic realities lately driving the ownership and controlled distribution of literary properties. Materialist studies of the literary field have often productively focused on a centre-periphery split and the exceptions to it: authors from the world's rural, remote, postcolonial, underdeveloped, or otherwise underprivileged peripheries are drawn into over-privileged centres of production, their work then being disseminated out first to readers at the centre and then unevenly to the distant peripheries from which they "originated" (Brouillette 2007; English 2005; Huggan 2001; Whitlock 2006). In the first part of our essay we discuss how concern about this process has been voiced by readers-in particular, by readers who identify with those peripheries and object to the concentration of power in the hands of those with access to elite capital and possessed of the will to succeed on the accepted terms. We look at the case of the reception of Aravind Adiga's prizewinning novel The White

2023

The famous 1962 precedent at the Restrictive Practices Court of the United Kingdom, "Books are different," is still the reasoning behind many cultural policies around the world, building on long-standing assumptions surrounding "the book." As this suggests, the "difference" of the book as a unique form of cultural (rather than economic) production has acquired a powerful status. But are books still different? In (somewhat provocatively) asking this question from a network-oriented and interdisciplinary perspective (book studies/literary studies), this Element inquires into the notion of "difference" in relation to books. Challenging common notions of "bibliodiversity," it reconsiders the lack of diversity in the publishing industry. It also engages with the diversifying potentials of the digital literary sphere, offering a case study of Bernardine Evaristo's industry activities and activism. The Element concludes with thoughts on bookishness, affect, and networked practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

2009

Much talk takes place around iPhones and apps, tweets, and vodcasts. As record shops are replaced by ecommerce and portals of legal and illegal downloading, 2 the concurrent closure of bookshops is rarely as publicized. Charing Cross Road -once a beacon for international bibliophiles -is a chimera of its former self. Murder One closed, with their website reporting ‚we are not a bookstore anymore.‛ 3 Silver Moon has been ‚incorporated‛ into Foyles. Some businesses like Sports Pages have migrated online. University bookshops are also suffering. Conservative buying practices ensure the purchase of textbooks that have passed through too many revisions and incorporated too little new research. The great works that appear on further reading lists -the ‚read before you die books‛ -have disappeared from the shelves. The impact on readers, writers, and publishers is clear. In the 2009 summer edition of the Society of Authors' magazine, a range of articles explored the role of supermarkets in selling books, the shrinkage of newspapers readerships, and the decline of the book review. The most disturbing article in the magazine was written by Sara Nelson. She stated that, ‚the one thing you hear every day is that 'publishing is going global.' But unless we come up with better ideas than these, the only way global publishing is going is south.‛ 4 One obvious solution to Nelson's concerns is to reinvest the local, regional, and national with intellectual and commercial value, rather than making arbitrary and ambiguous statements about globalization, internationalization, and mobility. Good bookshops with informed and enthusiastic staff are part of this strategy to invest a place with a purpose. Such an agenda is not an attack on the Amazonification of books. The problem is that consumers access Amazon looking for a particular title or author. Rarely do customers browse. Sometimes a fortuitous link will emerge through an automated listing of related titles or similar purchases. The problem with such a shopping system -and the information literacy structures on which it is based -is that readers search for ideas, topics, and authors already known to us. 5 There is little mechanism to discover unusual or dissenting ideas and information. While appearing to search the World Wide Web,

Enterprise and Society, 2009

The current plight of independent booksellers has the misfortune to be the latest in a series of plights. Laura Miller's Reluctant Capitalists explains that their troubles are long-standing and systemic, due not only to their competition with the chain-stores, Amazon, and each other but also to computer technology, to changes in American consumer culture, and to the means whereby publishers and retailers vie for the profit of a sale. Miller notes how conglomerate publishing favours conglomerate bookselling, and vice versa. Independents' battles with the chains go back as far as the Coolidge administration, and for years they held their own: 'According to US Government figures, there were thirty groups of bookstore chains in 1929. Between them, they owned 349 of the country's 2,647 bookstores, and accounted for 31.6 per cent of bookstore sales. Three decades later, those numbers had barely changed' (42). Then came suburban expansion, shopping malls, B. Dalton, and Waldenbooks. 'By the early 1980s, Walden was opening eighty to ninety stores a year; in 1981, with 704 branches, it became the first bookstore chain to have outlets in all fifty states' (45). By 1982 B. Dalton and Waldenbooks had captured nearly a quarter of all US book sales. By 1997, Borders and Barnes & Noble had taken over, together accounting for 43.3 per cent of bookstore sales. Other forces gathered against the independents. Steadily improved computerization and the technologies it permits-barcoding, inventory management, the Internet-favour economies of scale that deep-pocket chains are better able to turn to advantage. 'Far from the Internet resulting in a more decentralized bookselling environment, the shakeout among online booksellers contributed to the growing concentration of the book retail market' (53).

What does it mean to think of the rise of Amazon.com as an event in contemporary literary history? This essay analyzes the literary practices and programs " organic " to the Amazon digital ecology, including Kindle Direct Publishing, and then asks how the entrepre-neurial logic, ethos, and temporality of " customer service " might be taken as the dominant logic of contemporary fiction as such.