For the past few months I've tried to write new media pieces when making posts on this blog. It's oddly fitting, then, that this post (the first installment of many) consists of all prose, since it is here that I'll finalize the manifesto for my future writing projects, projects that, I hope, strengthen the bridge between new media and printed texts. I've sketched out ideas for such a manifesto once or twice in the past, but now I need to further develop my approach as I begin two writing textbooks. I'm calling the project Write Now. It will consist of two books, a writing guide and a handbook, each with extensive new media emphasis and content.
Both books will involve a good deal of public composing and social networking in their development. In fact, a key aspect of the project will be the way the development is opened up to public participation. I'll gladly build from the models so well developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book. The open and public composition processes they have set up for both the GAM3R 7H30RY and Without Gods books represents the kind of shared or moderated writing I'd like to accomplish. I'll also point to Collin's Rhetworks, Jeff's Digital Detroit, and Jenny's Auditory Epideictic as paving the way for actualizing the social possibilities for scholarship. I'd like to do something similar with my next textbooks.
I hunkered alone for two years recently writing a literature textbook and CD. I just don't have a taste for such isolated writing right now, and I'd like Write Now to have the benefit of online feedback and development. Conceptually and logistically, conflicts will surely arise. I'd like to implement a personal vision and produce published books for profit. But I'd also like to see a shared process of development within an interested community of readers and contributors. I'd like to make materials freely available to the public through an open source model that will help the community and make the materials stronger. But I know the commercial nature of the project will limit a good deal of this outreach potential. My intent for addressing these conflicts is to be honest, to admit that the context of commercial publishing will shape the work, to strive to be reflective and progressive in working with and against the grain of publishing pressures, and to ask for and facilitate the giving of help.
I should begin with a brief reflection on the process of finding a publisher for the project. For the past year I've spoken with every major publisher for college writing. Interactions have ranged from informal conversations about the project, to extended face-to-face meetings with officers, editors, development teams, media teams, marketing teams, and sales teams. In all of these interactions I have found the publishers to be genuinely interested in the future of writing. I'm not naive enough to overlook economics in their motivations, but, in the face of frequent criticisms of publishers as unresponsive to and exploitive of college writing, I'd be remiss in not observing that I found every publisher to be eager to listen, open to new possibilities, and, in instances, more tuned-in to student needs and desires than many instructors. Publishers seem ahead of the field in acknowledging that Web 2.0, portable devices, and new media will create profound changes for writers in the next decade. We talked about these developments at an If:book meeting in April and I was pleased to see that publishers, although approaching from different standpoints, were absolutely ready to participate in similar conversations.
I also should say I've learned a lot through the process of looking for a commercial venue for Write Now, and for the most part what I've learned makes me happy. Publishers take seriously the process of discovering what students and instructors want. Hierarchies between signing, developing, marketing, and selling textbooks are breaking down; instead information and decisions are shared, in part necessitated by the increasing risk factors associated with the investment costs of new editions. Publishers are more focused on a holistic approach to fewer texts, which hedges investments and limits options beyond the main stream, but also has the potential to result in better books, provided the vertical flow of information makes its way into the development process.
Publishers are also keenly aware of the price concerns regarding textbooks. Across companies, it's clear that publishers are ready with shorter versions of books should instructors and textbook committees request them. Publishers also are financially motivated to respond to the pressures that prevent students from buying and keeping books; no surprises here. What's promising, though, is the trend toward customization. Again, without any exceptions I could see, publishers are moving toward providing custom versions of texts and media that will help instructors, textbook adoption committees, and students identify and create texts that meet specific needs.
And, publishers are ready to push technology and social writing both in the production and distribution of their products and in the content of the texts. I proposed playlist, podcast, photo essay, collage, video collage, online profile, and dozens of other technology-based assignments for Write Now. Everyone I talked to welcomed those projects and wanted to keep the media and technology focus of the books. And, not one publisher balked at the notion of shifting the production model of the book to one consistent with the second Web. I proposed adding a public dimension to the writing through social software. I suggested participation from a broad community, and asked that publishers fund and facilitate that participation. I asked that some of the materials be released for the community to use and modify. We all had questions about logistics and boundaries, but every publisher was eager to implement these processes in the development of the books.
In fact, my eventual selection of Prentice Hall as a home for the project was based mainly on their eagerness to figure out together how we might transform the development process by opening it up. I started with an admission that I felt like I was straddling two worlds: one the open source, communal knowledge sphere I admire and participate with online, and two the world where I wanted to publish textbooks that challenge the state of writing but reach mainstream writing classes. We sat down and started brainstorming about how that might happen. The results will evolve over the next several years, but I wouldn't have committed to the process if I didn't believe it would offer opportunities for future students, for publishers, and for me to push writing.
So, I'm going public with this writing project. Look for more reflections, links to resources, and calls for participation here. If it works, look for those materials to develop into a shape recognizable as some form of open publishing. I'm not sure what to expect if it doesn't work. Either way, the process will play out in this and the other public spaces that make up the social Web.
I've decided to pull up stakes and move my blogging to a new site. I've been wanting to transition away from this Movable Type platform for a number of reasons, and now is as good a time as any. I'll write up some of my thinking to break in the new site.
I’d like to send out a message aimed at two different audiences. It’s a post to weave together two threads of conversation I’ve been considering of late. The first thread is Web 2.0. I know: not another summation of what makes the second Web different from the static Web. But, remember, I’m thinking of two different audiences here. And one of them needs to learn more about the current state of the Web, and especially about writing on the Web. Consider the composition outcomes offered by the Council of Writing Program Administrators:
As I contemplate whether and perhaps how to embark on a new textbook project,
I imagine how a new text might embody my current thinking about teaching and
the pushing of writing. A new text would have to sing the social turn and new
media. A new text would have to pour forth on the second Web. A new text would
have to pour forth with headphones filling spaces between my ears. That’s
the ticket to the new textbook ride, a rhythm bumping behind the concentrated
raking forward of assignments, exercises, and texts. Work with it, the rhythm.
The wetter pieces will be media layered over and into the instruction, the pieces
themselves new media compositions to turn the crank on new media composition.
Just
thought I'd add this observation I had when I first read this post last week.
It is telling, I think, that on the same day a photoshop contest was taking
place on Fark under the topic "
I guess at some level Rosen, and countless others, would acknowledge that the real fear is the new presence of image creation as a mode of communication, a communication in which creators filter, layer, crop, nudge, mask, clone, and perform any number of other sophisticated compositional moves. Couching the fear in terms of truth or respect--as most everyone here has pointed out--really just ignores the more radical transformation underlying the concern. The fear is the loss of the power of the word.
