Publishing Industry Overview 09/10 - 12/10

The mood is that of ‘it’s here’. In comparison to an industry survey I did before starting the MA last December. It is now a fact that digital is here. The mood is much less speculative and more accepting. There are still a lot of concerns mostly around how the publishing industry will continue to make money. There is a great deal of fear that giants such as Google and Amazon will simply take control. There is also a move into an agency model way of working that although met with negativity is believed to be a way of counteracting this.

Technology is moving forward quickly as it always does. The advances are affecting the quality of e-books, which is impacting positively on their sales. E-books matched the sales of hardbacks for the first time on Amazon. The need for a standard and cross-tech format is still very apparent however. It still feels like a new industry and there is a lot of fear about being left behind.

Interestingly PrintWeek is far more concerned about environmental issues around printed books then Bookseller. This is perhaps because the media they focus upon is mostly viewed as the less environmentally friendly. Unsurprisingly PrintWeek also had to most positive things to say about printed books, however this does not diminish its meaning.

There is still a feeling that books will continue to be valuable in printed form. It is suggested that people desire something tangible and trustworthy. The physical book is something to be relied upon and more unique than the oversaturated digital world. This feeling of oversaturation is also brought up by Julian Tait in the interview I had with him. He highlighted the ‘not mass produced’ label is found more are more on modern products. The individuality and connection to the process of making a physical object is something we engage with. Luxury printing and high quality books continue to sell well in the recession. Again highlighting our want for bespoke and beautiful things.

Overall the industry feels to be in a state of flux. There is a lot of worrying but also a sense of optimism and excitement. There are legal issues that need addressing so the publishing world does not go the same way as the music industry but people seem to be aware of this. The development of Augmented Reality is something to get excited about and to engage with. Also the possibilities of non-linear narratives commented on by Julian Tait and Bookseller are definitely things to be looking out for over the next few months.

Baudrillard

Of all the lectures Baudrillard was one of the few philosophers that I was already familiar with. This is because in my proposition for the MA I had already made reference to his work. In this was I knew that this was potentially going to be one of the texts for the focus of my essay. The reading that we focused on was upon seduction and it had many potential applications for my own work on publishing in new technology.

One of the notions discussed was how places like Disney Land and Las Vegas appear more ‘real’ than our everyday lives. Baudrillard argues that their upfront artifice, their knowing fakery is truer than the deceitful constructs we live with day to day. Seduction he argues is a purely surface thing, purely visual. These surface things distract us from thinking too much about something. The plastic chips in a casino for example make great use of this. We play with our fake money, it stops us from thinking about it too much.

This fake money also uses the one of the other aspects of the seduction game. The key rule to seduction is to never say that you are seducing. As soon as you say that’s what you are doing the seduction ends. The gambling tokens are a way of avoiding saying exactly what you’re doing and so spoiling the game.

Seduction also fits in well with Deleuzes notion of a world in movement. Seduction is the action or process between two things. For Baudrillard the world is moving between seductions. We are always striving for fulfilment, but it’s the its act of seduction not the pay off that we want. As in consumerism, it’s the lusting for an object that we enjoy but once we have it inevitably there is then another that we want. In this way we live in the illusion that once we have the object we will be happy. But the desire is internal and is always there. For Deleuze we are constituted of desire.

Consumerism has moved into a stage where there are so many options and brands that we no longer buy something for its function but because we want them. There are so many versions of everything that we now buy into an experience. The product says something about who we are, its real function is to describe our personalities. This has lead to more and more elaborate adverts. In some ways we are now in a backlash against them. There are some ‘simple’ adverts being used more and more now that look back to the function of the object. These ad’s do however still employ seduction in order to sell. They flatter the consumer, you can see through the nonsense in the adverts, you know this does what you want.

This return to selling function reflects the general trend for a desire for authenticity in our society. This is something shown in design through the use of handmade typefaces for example and cut-out style illustration. It reflects the growing strength of Art’s and Crafts highlighted through programmes such as ‘Kirsty’s handmade Christmas’. There is a general feeling of Nostalgia in design, a hankering for simple times past. Here seduction is still used to sell an artifice, an idealised nostalgia of our times past.

Despite the move towards digital technology in the publishing industry nostalgia is still being used as a powerful selling tool. This is most apparent in book cover design. The first place that books try to seduce us. They do this through offering a glimpse, a teaser of the content of the book. This surface seduction is a powerful selling tool for publishers. The new nostalgic covers being used to sell classic penguin books is a good example of ‘simple’ design in action. The covers use a highly graphical design with a limited palette of black white and orange, which harks back to covers from when the books were first, released. A closer comparison however to the original designs reveals a certain amount of ‘tidying up’ in the new covers. This nostalgic style uses surface seduction just as much as modern cover design does.

Another way in which publishing uses seduction is through the use of genre. The cover styles of books use genre and stereotypes to sell. The stereotypes offer us clues as to what we are in for. The repeat experience is sellable, as earlier discussed we are constantly being seduced by something and so the next version of something we enjoy will always appeal. In this way an author courts the reader. They build a relationship with the reader and so you make a personal connection leading you to collect their work. Authors and stereotypes are equally important in both digital and physical book selling.

In some ways you could think that just seeing or reading the book would be enough to fulfil a seduction. Often people who have borrowed a book and enjoyed it will still desire to own the book. There is a certain amount of control gained by owning an object. It is yours to access whenever you want and isn’t tainted by the use of others. Also going back to the notion of us buying things, which reflect our personality, owning a book says something about who we are. Having a bookshelf of our books says a lot about our interests and personality. It lends us an amount of gravitas; books are believed to make us look wise and knowledgeable. In this way the value of a physical book is arguable higher than the value of a digital book. Others cannot see the books you own on a digital device. A digital device says far less about who we are as a person and simply carries less of us in it. The version of a book you own, hardback or paperback also says something about how much you value the book. This is something again that is lacking in the digital edition. In many ways the value of a book as a physical object is something difficult to put into the digital version.

Kristeva

This lecture focused upon abjection. It had a lot in common with the lecture series I did last year on the uncanny so I had more background knowledge of this subject than the others. Despite this it was very difficult to apply the principles and notions around abjection to my own practice. It does however n some ways link to other ideas. The 'edge' something discussed by Delueze is a feature of abjection. The abject sits on the edge of our understanding. It acts almost as a safeguard to what is beyond.

It could be used loosely, to help explain why there is negative feeling towards the digital in the publishing industry. Kristeva explains that the abject crosses boundaries and categorization. This disruption of our understanding of the world upsets us. This is why things like the digital world, which is in flux and very confusing. Can meet with such hostility and fear, we don't like the upsetting of a hierarchy. It's a fear of 'the other' the foreign technology invading the publishing world. Kristeva points out that is not the thing itself which upsets us, but the animal feeling inside ourselves that has responded to it. The abject can also be a fear of loss, and the fear of no longer reading is very real to some people in the face of digital.

Nancy

This week the lecture focused upon Listening which was a nice follow on from Silence. The writing style however was much denser. The thoughts in it were more confused and the reasoning unclear. I think this reflects the subject. The distinctions between something like listening and hearing are small and not easy to define. Nancy points out that language itself is failing him at some points. The way in which he struggles to convey with language what he is trying to express further enforces his meaning. The lack of clarity forces you to study it closer to find its meaning. This gives his idea that once written, language lacks the potency of the spoken word.

For me it would be interesting if his work to listen to his work. It quite possibly would have made more sense. Would it have been possible to do this well? Or would it no longer be philosophy? Nancy considers language in relation to the visual as well as audio. It is interesting to consider this in terms of typography. Designers spend a very long time adjusting the minute differences in types shape and style. It is much harder to find examples in audio. Poetry, particularly concrete poetry is a great example of the language and visuals combining to create meaning.

However this is not to say that the visual is more powerful than audio. The visual as Nancy points out is much more limiting. When you listen to something you can discern many more things from it than you can from one image. The timbre of someones voice can convey much more than their words written down. Music also can transport the listener to another world, the imagery imagined limitless. Where as the visual has a clear meaning and end. There are certain advantages to audio in books as well. The audio book for example uses introduction music to great effect. This snippet of music at the beginning conveys far more about the story than the front cover.

I disagree with some of Nancy's notions. He places too little emphasis on the power of imagery. He suggests that imagery can not provoke emotion but I would argue that it certainly can. I don't dispute that audio is very powerful in causing emotion however. A horror movie for example, when watched with no sound lacks fear and tension. But Nancy's view of the aural as an absolute I would continue to dispute. I think it is very difficult to separate these two senses.

Sontag

This weeks theme was Silence by Susan Sontag, the first female writer studied in the lecture series. She considers silence in relation to the artist. Artists often use silence to give their work more power, they become hermits or simply stop making work. This serves to highlight and contrast the work that they made before. Of course art cannot be truly silent as it is not Art if there is no audience being communicated with. There are some similarities to Deleuze here. The hermit lives on the outside of society like Deleuze's sorcerer. They both recognise that the outsider  has a great impact on the inner society. They show the limits of what we can do and they define our culture.

These outsiders use myths in order to survive, they place meaning onto things to give them value they otherwise would not have had. Its a form of mysticism again with strong links to Deleuzes sorcerers. This applicable immediately when we look at how we sell products. Giving something a Prada label immediately gives it a high price tag. High class brands often to use silence to sell their products. This is particularly evident in the way that designer clothes are visually merchandised. Expensive shops have emptier windows, they have fewer clothes on the rail and often they do not display the price. As you look at it you know if you need to ask how much it is you can't afford it.

The notion of giving things space to increase its value and impact can also be applied to typography.  Having one small piece of type in a page highlights the space round it as well as the text. The silence needs some noise to make it visible. Silence in terms of reading is a relatively new phenomenon. Books have been traditionally read out loud for hundreds of years and was a primarily social object. Last year I looked at how modern readers read silently creating a very private world and that in this others do not know what we are thinking. It is interesting that reading aloud for some can be a way of creating silence. It helps them to concentrate upon the meaning of the text. It blocks out exterior noises and stops interior thoughts from distracting them.

This is very quickly applied to academic practice as reading back an essay aloud has many benefits. It helps you find the places where the semantics of the work are not working. It also helps find the natural pauses where punctuation should be. Overall silence when considered more closely quickly becomes integral to the way we perceive and interact with the world.

Augue

This lecture focused on memory. Augue uses the metaphor of traveling through the metro in Paris to explain his theories. He uses it to argue that different places can become saturated with our experiences. In relation to my subject it could go some way to explaining why we keep books. In many ways they hold our memory, their tactility evokes an image of our past selves. There is a value in the old, in nostalgia. It is apparent even in the names of some of modern business' those with a family name encourage more trust in them.

Something interesting that we discussed in the seminar was that even when an artists work is in essence very repetitive we often still find it interesting. There is something to be said for the comfort of familiarity and safety in the knowledge of what something is. We would all prefer to be one of Augue's travelers than a tourist. I believe this relates to books that are re-read. We know what is going to happen, so when we read them we can take comfort in the knowledge that it will all come good in the end. This may well be something that is more applicable to a physical book as they have more permanence. they are not as slippery as a digital resource that may be deleted or corrupt in  the blink of an eye.

The way in which we read a text is also very similar to the way in which Augue's tourist reads the map. The tourist continually checking which stop he is at reflects the concentration needed for a new text. The layout of a text keeps everything a connected, the information is linked within the page. The layout system of grids also reinforces this order.

Augue points out that to remember everything would be monstrous, he gives the example of a diary of all the food consumed in a year. When all of the is listed together it truly becomes horrible. When I expanded on this thought I realised that its application to life can become very broad. As anything in excess is bad for us. Augue highlights the importance in forgetting and that repression is not necessarily a destructive force. Augue has introduced the notion that familiarity does not necessarily breed contempt. That there is a value in becoming the traveler and so being a manipulator of space and time.

Barthes

This lecture concentrated upon images, in particular photography. The reading came from Camera Lucida which having heard of before I can now relate to and understand much better. The reading itself was quite easy to digest. The sections of text were smaller and so more digestible than Deleuze’s work for example. This is something I should remember to apply to bodies of text such as my learning record in the future. Mostly as for own work, I think it is important that the reader can easily understand what I writing about.

In this reading we consider what is a photograph? It is not the image itself but the way in which we interpret it which is important. As with Heideggers notion of an object being boring, it is a combination of the physicality of the object and your experiences which create your experience of it. In terms of my own practice it is important to consider the implications of a certain image in a project. If you were choosing and image for a calendar of Big Ben for example you can disregard some photos immediately. However when you start getting down to your final selection it becomes more about gut instinct as to which you go for. This gut instinct process is something to build upon and recognise as it’s happening in order to use it in the future.

Along with realising that our interpretation is important,t the way in which we react to  photographs specifically is also important to consider. We immediately associate photography with fact, the subject of the photo was there in the frame at that time. This can create feelings of nostalgia, or sadness when we look at someone we know to be dead. This reaction is different to that of a painting of someone we know has died. This is because a painting can be created using only the imagination, they may have never met the subject, and so we do not emote with it as readily.

There is also an important distinction to be made between a photograph and a film. A moving image is much more impermanent, with a photo we know the subject is never going to move out of the frame. It is more permanent, much like a book in comparison to a blog. We can rely upon the book remaining the way it is, containing the same information in the same way. Whereas the blog feels less permanent, the author could delete it in a second or the connection could crash and your reading of it finish. Another ‘moving’ version of the traditional book is an audio book. It carries with it the impermanence of speech, its movement making it feel more fragile.

Perec

Of the readings so far this was the easiest to read, it wasn't bogged down by flowery language. It's structure with many subheadings made it much easier to digest as well. The lecture was on the categorisation of things, why do we do this and how. Early on Perec points out that a list should not list everything but by doing so it misses things out. He highlights the imperfection of categories yet their necessity in how we understand the world.

I was particularly interested that despite the arbitrary nature of categories such as the alphabet and despite us knowing this we then apply meaning to its order. For example a B movie or a C list celebrity, in reality the position of these numbers mean nothing yet they help us make sense of the world. For me categorisation enviably leads to a hierarchy. Wether this way of understanding the world is a positive one I am unsure, Apartheid, Nazi Germany in fact the whole notion of a government is based upon this. This process of forgetting that things don't make sense is known as naturalisation. In my own practice I should try to remember that thing don't have to be the way they are and to question the structure within I am working.

Deleuze

Despite this reading being particularly dense I felt that this has immediate and interesting applications to my own practice more so than Heidegger. Deleuze in many ways is the opposite to Heidegger as he views things as not being but becoming. He introduces the concept of a becoming-animal, where a person can be becoming an animal and takes on some of its attributes. This isn't to say that a person actually becomes a dog as that would be being Deleuze suggests that we are in a constant state of becoming something else. From this I though the notion of a becoming-book could be particularly interesting.

This becoming is of course a process so within art for example seeing the artists hand in some work eg Cezanne would show this process. We know that the image is made out of paint yet we see that is a landscape. This relates to text on page also, we know that is made up of letters yet it becomes meaningful, the reading of it takes you elsewhere. The content of books themselves can also often be about becoming and the act of writing them. Deleuze references Virginia Woolf whose characters are often in a state of becoming.

Deleuze also writes about time, and how it never stops but just continues at different speeds. This sense of movement is apparent in the way in which we read, as our eyes move across a page and in the turning of a page. Also the way in which a book is published in editions, and that more versions are created also ties into this feeling of becoming. Again it seems to fit much better than a state of being books and their nature seem to always be moving.

The way in which the publishing industry as a whole is also in a state of becoming. The move into digital technology is particularly interesting as digital technology it is often seen as masculine. However I would argue that it feels more in a state of becoming than being and therefore more feminine. As like the feminist movement, it is questioning the established structure. Particularly in terms of the internet and new programs, devices like the i-pad being created. I am interested to see how books are almost in a state of becoming-digital. It appears to be an unhappy progression in the publishing industry as they are reacting quite painfully to the changes however change isn't often achieved smoothly.

It would be interesting to try and apply the becoming-animal to a book. Could a library be a pack? with its own outsiders and sorcerers to encounter? Each book certainly has an identity the physical quality of a book affects the way in which we interact with it. Also like Deleuze's Vampires infecting others as a way of procreating could we consider the act of reading as an infection of the mind? Could the act of reading and the implantation of ideas create in people a becoming-book?

Heidegger

The first strategies of thoughts lecture in the series was on Boredom from the philosopher Heidegger. It was my first experience of Heidegger so it took a little while to adjust to his writing style which is almost a stream of consciousness. He examines the subject from one angle and then another. He never really focuses or comes to a definitive answer to what he is examining. Despite this initially being frustrating you quickly realise that this is an important way of thinking that can be applied to your own practice. It is not the answer but the journey that is important and so viewing things from different angles has a great value.

Heidegger also highlights the importance of documenting your ideas as it is not possible to hold two thoughts in your mind. Therefore techniques such as his writing style and mind-mapping are important parts of research.

The notion of time is one way of understanding boredom. That when we experience boredom time seems to slow, however we try to avoid this. It is almost contradictory to our nature as we wish to live for a long time yet we are wishing our life away. Heidegger also uses Dasein which refers to man as in state of Being, which is very structuralist. For him the human mind is more static and fixed in itself, which used as a basis for patriarchal society.

So from Heidegger's work around boredom I can apply to my own practice his stratedgy of thought. I can think around my subject and try to view it from different angles in order to be more thorough and original. Another concept I can learn from Heidegger relates to the nature of boredom. It is that an object itself is not boring but it is a combination of our own perception and the object that creates boredom. This can be applied in my practice in terms of remembering where I place my own work. That something like too much exposure can produce monotony and so the right amount of work in the right place will produce the best results.

Hello

Hello,

The blog has come into being as a way of documenting my thoughts around the MA Design and Art Direction (Manchester School of Art) I have started this year. My intention is to use it as a space to think around and expand on the idea's I am getting and the experiences I'm having on the course and professionally.

I intend to look at how books are developing into digital media. This I will consider through examining the way in which we read, the value of a physical object and wider issues within the publishing industry. I will be focusing in particular on a comparison between analogue and digital media and so this blog is an important way of documenting my findings alongside my journal.