In pondering on how the history of print has impacted the way we read what strikes me most is how, as the world constantly changes, books have remained stubbornly the same. We still have front and back covers, (typically) we still read the page from top to bottom, and flip the pages from right to left. Much of the anatomy of the book, developed at the inception of print, persists even in online versions. What has changed the most has been the result of a relinquishing control in the publishing industry. Printing and distribution has historically been enacted by a specialized few. For words to be made available to wider readership they had to be reviewed, vetted and distributed by a (patriarchal) elite. Similar to how a lifted patent allows for a branded drug to be manufactured in a generic format, ironically, the Internet and the communities on it, have provided us with platforms to bypass publishers and print our own work.

I experienced this first-hand last year when the collective I work with ventured from digital to. Utilizing an online vendor we had total control over the printing process: We chose the works and photos, the layout, colours, paper quality & size, number of books printed and price per copy – we were the producers and contributors, designers and imaginers. The result of this shift in power is not on how we read, but what we can read. Printing and publishing is no longer controlled by the gatekeepers of books. Now, anyone can print a book, or a magazine or a zine. The content available is more obscure, more radical and more innovative than ever. The print industry has given way to a more localized, democratized version of printing. So whilst I still might flip pages from back to front and read pages from top to bottom, the words, authors and collectives that I have access to have evolved and multiplied as the opportunity to print has expanded.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.