E-Books, Activism, And The Future Of Publishing
By Mickey Z.
19 February, 2015
Worldnewstrust.com
Deborah Emin, Publisher, Sullivan Street Press. Photo credit: Mickey Z.
An Interview with Deborah Emin of Sullivan Street Press
I met Deborah Emin in 2013 when she attended a talk I gave at Bluestockings Bookstore and Activist Cafe in New York City.
She's the publisher/founder of Sullivan Street Press (SSP) -- which began life as a digital-only publishing company. (Full disclosure: SSP published my 12th book, Occupy this Book: Mickey Z. on Activism and its follow-up, Occupy These Photos, is in the works.)
Deborah is also the author of the four-part Scags series and a writing teacher for 20 years. Her articles, short fiction, and poetry have appeared on Alternet, Huffington Post, Gay City News, Publishing Perspectives, Mondoweis, and numerous journals.
While working on our book projects, Deborah and I have shared many marathon conversations, often touching on the myriad issues swirling around emergence of the e-book. With SSP at the forefront, Deborah has been honing a new vision for how publishing can become more environmentally sound and far more intertwined in the crucial work of activist organizing.
She and I recently discussed e-book technology, its co-optation, and its potential. Our conversation went a little something like this…
Mickey Z.: How has the invention of the e-book (and tangentially, the devices upon which we read such e-books) played out within the confines of 21st century corporate capitalism?
Deborah Emin: The corporate monsters have trivialized the real power of these e-reading devices. And they have made e-book technology a labor-intensive drudgery that inhibits real growth.
Amazon with their proprietary Mobi that converts ePub files so their files cannot go on other devices. And the other device makers not producing a standardized format that could easily be converted for all other devices. As well, the Android systems (Google) that also creates another variety of problems. All of this has to do with corporate power grabs. Simpler folks wondered why couldn't there be just one format and you read it on the device of your choosing?
MZ: What role, if any, did publishers play in this process?
DE: Publishers fought this technology at first and destroyed a company that was selling only out-of-print books this way. The publishing industry fought this transition for years until Amazon brought out the Kindle in 2007. From then on the other battles have raged, but it's all and only about money and dominance. There is no interest whatsoever in what societal good books serve.
MZ: Have you witnessed any progressive/activist/radical groups addressing this disconnect?
DE: Even my progressive acquaintances will not talk honestly about Amazon's warehousing issues, their connections to the CIA, their avoidance of taxes, their gradual take over of the USPS, etc. No one wants to tamper with the largest book distributor or book search engine. The worst of it for publishers is that Amazon won't share any of their customer database with publishers. There are those issues which I get very upset about but this is one powerful sacred cow that cannot be touched even by those who call themselves progressives.
MZ: I've heard you declare that we've “thrown off the Gutenberg traces.” Can you elaborate on this and tell us how this concept connects to yet another set of corporate traps?
DE: The geeks have teamed up with publishers now to do an end run around writers. This may seem too far fetched to some but I have been reading accounts of these mashups with publishing execs, VCs and tech guys. They will find a way to robotically (AI) produce books. What matters to them is content. That is the operative word. That is their vision of the future. Who needs messy human relations when you can now (and they are already creating machine-run content in small newspapers as we sit here) create entire books of content by following formulas and shaping them to a reader's attention.
The devices we read on, just like Netflix following us as we stream films, are relaying lots of data about how, when, where, what we read. For those who consume large quantities of genre fiction, which is the main e-book revenue, these formulas can be machine derived. and add to that this data they collect, new e-books can be "written" specifically for you, appealing to that narcissistic trap many of us fall into.
However, I am only seeing some reports of these meetings on tech news sites and no comment anywhere else. But think of those implications for a moment too.
MZ: What role do you see SSP playing to counter such corporate conditioning?
DE: Publishers like Sullivan Street Press have a responsibility to train people about two things: To read more and to take apart the texts and recreate them for their own use. Why must books be so fetishized? We do that now with bound books. But we don't need to do that with e-books. Imagine creating posters, scrapbooks, audio and video based on what you think will teach a topic to your community. Imagine having access to all those tools on one device (which you do) and sharing this content globally.
So in comparison to our AI corporate marauders who just want to mass produce the same crap, we can alter and transform almost anything to use for mobilizing action and creating virtual hubs. Yet while that possibility exists, we know how eager governments will be to try and sabotage these efforts. Better the mass produced numbness than the creative transmission of ideas and plans.
For me as a publisher and a writer, I want Sullivan Street Press to put the best possible content out there, have our writers paid for their work and help readers and activists learn how to make radical use of our content.
MZ: How can readers learn more?
DE: If activists get involved with and support the most efficient means we have, book publishing, which via e-books is global, to tell the stories, share the plans, occupy the real discussions we must have to save this planet, then automatically readers will not just learn more but do more.
Contact: [email protected]
Mickey Z. is the author of 12 books, most recentlyOccupy this Book: Mickey Z. on Activism. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be found on the Web here. Anyone wishing to support his activist efforts can do so by making a donation here.
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