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Wednesday, April 16, 2008

The big announcement, at long last

I've been hinting for weeks (maybe longer) that I had a B-I-G announcement forthcoming about my book, The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture From Consumerism to Control. At long last, here it is: the book will be published in 2009 by Columbia University Press!

I'm thrilled, needless to say, because Columbia's such an esteemed press and has published so many books I love: from Rachel Bowlby's Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping to Gary Cross' An All Consuming Century, and from David Henkin's City Reading: Written Words and Public Spaces in Antebellum New York to Gilles Deleuze and FĂ©lix Guattari's What Is Philosophy? and beyond.

What's also thrilling is that Columbia has agreed to make available, for free, a Creative Commons licensed PDF of The Late Age of Print. It will be released on the internet, concurrent with the publication of the print edition of the book. This is the first time Columbia is producing a book this way, and given my own proclivities toward intellectual property (not to mention the arguments I make in the book), I couldn't be happier to be the test case. What's more, I'm pleased to see another major university press taking a strongly affirmative stance toward open access to ideas.

Many of you who read this blog will find yourselves thanked in the book's acknowledgments. For now, though, a big, blanket "thank you" to all who've supported me throughout the process of researching, writing, revising, and finalizing The Late Age of Print. It's funny--for someone who writes about book publishing, I feel like I learned as much about the book business by trying to get The Late Age of Print published as I did by actually writing it!

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Congratulations, Ted! That's great news, both about the press and the PDF...

Ted Striphas said...

...thanks for the good wishes, Collin!

--t

dave_mcavoy said...

Congrats! The open access bit is especially cool news (especially for your poor grad student readers).

I'll also be looking forward the inevitable article you can write about the wider implications of your book's distribution -- a sequel of sorts.

Ron Greene said...

Super cool news, All Hail Ted Striphas

typewritermark said...

Awesome Job, Ted!

Bob Rehak said...

Ted: that's fantastic -- congratulations!

Jason Mittell said...

Congrats on both traditional & non-traditional publishing landmarks! You might think about making the online version a bit more interactive & "value-added" via a platform like Sophie (http://sophieproject.org/). But you obviously have some time to plan for the roll-out...

Ted Striphas said...

Wow! Thanks, everyone, for such a kind and generous outpouring of support. How incredibly kind of all of you. I especially appreciate your affirming the move to help make The Late Age of Print more accessible. And Jason--thanks for turning me on to the Sophie site, which, I'm embarrassed to say, I hadn't heard of.

Y'all rock!

Greg Wise said...

Congrats! Great news!

Ben Peters said...

Ted, that's fantastic! I'm thrilled for you, for the book, and for Columbia's enlightened experiments on copyright issues. I've heard good things about the new Copyright Office Director, Kenneth Crews, and hope he has been involved.

Michael Butterworth said...

Great news, Ted. Congratulations!

Ted Striphas said...

...wow! Y'all are the best! Really, thanks so very much for all the kind words. They've really warmed my heart.