The following article is written by a chap (Mike Shatzkin) who I find very little to agree about when it comes to publishing. Oddly he just wrote this article that argues for ‘enterprise publishing’ as a force for change, and an important trend. As it happens this thinking, which I argued for many times over the years, is how Book Sprints has been operating within for the past 14 years. As it also happens, folks like this author have been pretty dismissive of these arguments in the past which makes it interesting that the tone of some of them is changing. Mike Shatzkin positions himself as a kind of leader of the mainstream, so I’m interested in who picks up on the opinions reflected in the article he wrote.
However, what the author of the below article doesn’t quite get yet, is how this trend changes the process of producing books. As I stated in 2014
“issues of voice, of knowledge production, of collective ownership and participatory workflows and concepts will come up in future discussions.”
https://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing/2014/05/27/adam-hyde-books-are-evil-or-towards-a-collaborative-production-model-of-books-using-free-software/)
I’m more of the opinion that this movement isn’t just a placing of publishing ‘somewhere else’ as suggested by the below article, but there is a lot of opportunity to deconstruct publishing and authorship and right the many wrongs (capital P) Publishing has maintained when it comes to the proprietorship of knowledge, its construction, and its authority. I doubt the author would arrive at this as they are a pretty mainstream commentator. Nevertheless, the following is an interesting read.
