The Late Age of Print The Late Age of Print EVERYDAY BOOK CULTURE FROM CONSUMERISM TO CONTROL Ted Striphas C O L U M B I A U NIVERSITY PRESS | N E W Y ORK Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex This PDF is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License, available at http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or by mail from Creative Commons, 171 Second St., Suite 300, San Francisco, CA 94105 U.S.A. “Noncommercial” as defined in this license specifically excludes any sale of this work or any portion thereof for money, even if the sale does not result in a profit by the seller or if the sale is by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit or NGO. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Striphas, Theodore G. The late age of print: everyday book culture from consumerism to control / Ted Striphas. p. cm. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-14814-6 (alk. paper) 1. Book industries and trade—United States. 2. Books and reading—United States. 3. Publishers and publishing—United States. 5. Electronic publishing—United States. 6. Internet Bookstores—United States. I. Title. Z471.S85 2009 381’.45002-dc22 References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. For Phaedra Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Late Age of Print 1 Bottom Lines 6 Edges 9 Sites 13 1 E-Books and the Digital Future 19 A Book by Any Other Name 23 Shelf Life 26 Book Sneaks 31 Disappearing Digits 40 A Different Story to Tell 44 2 The Big-Box Bookstore Blues 47 Chain Reactions? 51 Thoroughly Modern Bookselling 56 Things to Do with Big-Box Bookstores 70 History’s Folds 77 3 Bringing Bookland Online 81 “The Tragedy of the Book Industry” 84 Encoding/Decoding—Sort of 91 A Political Economy of Commodity Codes 99 The Remarkable Unremarkable 107 4 Literature as Life on Oprah’s Book Club 111 O® 114 “No Dictionary Required” 117 “It’s More About Life” 125 A Million Little Corrections 130 An Intractable Alchemy 137 5 Harry Potter and the Culture of the Copy 141 Securing Harry Potter 143 Pirating Potter 157 He-Who- Must-Be-Named 171 Conclusion: From Consumerism to Control 175 On the Verge 176 From Heyday to History and Beyond 187 Notes 191 Index 231 VIII | CONTENTS Acknowledgments HAVING TAUGHT COURSES on the history and cultural politics of electronic media for the better part of a decade, in the fall of 2006 I decided to shift gears a bit. I designed a new undergraduate course called “The Cultures of Books and Reading,” hoping it would dovetail with a book—this book—I was working on at the time. As excited as I was about the subject matter, I couldn’t help but harbor some doubt. Would the class attract enough stu- dents to avoid preemptive cancellation by the university registrar? After all, experience had taught me that undergraduates, most of whom are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, would be enthusiastic to learn about cutting-edge digital media and would also have plenty to say about increas- ingly “old-fashioned” technologies, such as television. But would a class about book culture, offered not in a literature but in a communication department, spark their interest? Or would it seem too out of touch, too frumpy, too analog? Some days it’s easy to believe books won’t be around much longer. My worst fear, perhaps, was that something as mundane as a lack of interest in my class would simultaneously lend credence to this belief and effectively undercut a main argument I make here, namely, that reports announcing the death of books have been greatly exaggerated. As it turns out, I shouldn’t have second-guessed myself. To my surprise and delight, the course enrollment was one student shy of the maximum. The group was savvy about what’s been happening lately—and, in some cases, not so lately—in the book world. Many students professed to being avid book readers, well beyond what they were assigned. Some even fin- ished a few pages of what seemed to be pleasure reading in the moments before our class periods began. Granted, this course was an elective; the extent to which their knowledge and interests can be described as typical of their peers is thus difficult to judge. Even so, I should have known bet- ter than to assume my undergraduate students hadn’t found a meaningful place for books in their everyday lives. Like these students, many people have caused me to clarify my own assumptions about everyday book culture during the long process of con- ceiving, researching, writing, revising, and finally publishing this book. The list of those I wish to thank must begin with Lawrence Grossberg. Larry helped nurture this project from its inception, displaying his characteristic generosity of time, spirit, and intellect. I owe a profound debt to him, one I have no hope of repaying, except perhaps by mentoring my students as skillfully and patiently as he mentored me. I wish to extend my heartfelt gratitude to the following teachers who supported my research during my years as a graduate student in commu- nication studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Marcus Breen for helping me to find my bearings as a media historian; Michael Hardt for his rigorous reading of Marxism and contemporary theory, which runs like a thread throughout this book; Vicky Johnson for first prompting me to imagine how television relates to books; Della Pollock for consis- tently reminding me that good faith and good humor are key to making critical intellectual work engaging for all involved; and Jan Radway for demonstrating how to make cultural studies and book history harmonize. Collectively you were—and are—my dream team. I also want to acknowledge the contributions, both tangible and intan- gible, of mentor, teacher, and friend John Nguyet Erni. It was John who first introduced me to cultural studies. In doing so, he forever affected how I think about the everyday objects that surround us. Other friends and col- leagues deserve special recognition for assisting me at various stages of this project. Kembrew McLeod, John Durham Peters, Jonathan Sterne, and Siva Vaidhyanathan provided the advice, perspective, and support I needed pre- cisely when I needed it. My gratitude extends to the Conjunctures group for offering a safe space in which to try out new ideas. Charles Acland, Marty Allor, Anne Balsamo, Briankle Chang, Melissa Deem, Ron Greene, James Hay, Lisa Henderson, Gil Rodman, Greg Seigworth, Mehdi Semati, Jennifer Slack, Charlie Stivale, and Greg Wise have been especially helpful in this regard. Thanks are also due to Henry A. Giroux, Gary Hall, and Julia T. Wood for the confidence they’ve displayed in my work, and to Tony Falzone for helping me to navigate the murky waters of permission culture. X | ACKNOWLEDGMENTS While working on this book I’ve enjoyed the company of bright and talented colleagues at two universities. Greg Waller, my department chair at Indiana University, and Barb Klinger, my faculty mentor, provided both practical and intellectual guidance. I also want to thank my research assis- tant, Brian Ruh, for his diligence and exceptional organizational skills. Ste- phen Berrey, Ilana Gershon, Mary Gray, Michael Kaplan, John Lucaites, Josh Malitsky, Yeidy Rivero, Cynthia Duquette Smith, and Robert Terrill each deserve a shout-out not only for their friendship but also for forward- ing pertinent materials on book culture whenever they happened upon them. At Ohio University I benefited from Michael Arrington’s camarade- rie, Greg Shepherd’s counsel, and Jeff St. John’s well-tempered bibliophilia. An Ohio University summer research grant helped support my work on this book. I’m grateful to the publishers, editors, and reviewers of three scholarly journals who allowed me to audition some of the arguments I now share here in substantially revised and extended form. Chapter 1 draws heavily on my essay “Disowning Commodities: Ebooks, Capitalism, and Intellectual Property Law,” Television and New Media 7, no. 3 (August 2006): 231–60. Chapter 3 includes material that originally appeared in “Cracking the Code: Technology, Historiography, and the ‘Back Office’ of Mass Culture,” Social Epistemology 19, nos. 2–3 (April–September 2005): 261–82. Lastly, a portion of chapter 4 was published as “A Dialectic with the Everyday: Communica- tion and Cultural Politics on Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 20, no. 3 (September 2003): 295–316. I wish to acknowledge Sage Publications, Taylor & Francis, Ltd. (http://www.tandf. co.uk/journals), and the National Communication Association for grant- ing me permission to reproduce portions of this work in modified form. My gratitude extends to all those at Columbia University Press who have had a hand in bringing this book to life. I especially wish to single out my editor, Philip Leventhal, not only for believing in this book but also for championing some of the principles it stands for. He facilitated its release in both hardbound form and as a Creative Commons–licensed electronic edition. It’s a testament to Philip’s vision, and to the vision of Columbia University Press, that they’ve permitted this book to deliver on one of the most compelling aspects of the late age of print. My mother, Sue Striphas, instilled in me a passion for language and taught me how to read—foundational life lessons too often overlooked, without which this book certainly wouldn’t exist.