Questions of Authority, Part 2

In an earlier post, I briefly discussed the issue of print text’s traditional authority over digital texts. I gave the reasons that print text has a lengthier legacy than e-texts and that people value print text because it costs them money. While I would like to revisit the money element later, I am going to continue in this post with the second arena I mentioned: establishment and reputation.

Before beginning my previous discussion, I recounted a short debate which involved me and two others. In the end, my opinion won out because I had a degree, and behind this degree stood an established institution and its reputation. With print text, there is also an establishment and reputation to consider.

First, print text as an establishment goes back to its legacy. Because print text has been around a long time and widely circulated, it has been established as the dominant form of text, and the producers of print text have been established as well. They have money to print, and they want to profit from their print texts. So, they select only the most profitable materials for printing. “Most profitable” could be anything from crowd pleasing love poetry or “page-turning” novels to the most respected scientific or literary discourses. Printers became known for the types of text they printed and distributed. Today, we have the highly respected Norton Publishing Company, Oxford University Press, Longman, and others that are established as critical and literary publishers. Scholastic is known for printing educational material for children in elementary and secondary schools. Marvel and DC print comics, and even well-known booksellers, such as Barnes and Noble, have established themselves as printers as well. Writers seek out particular publishers to print their materials because these printers have established the standard for text, and that standard is prestige and print. Even Bolter admits that “as authors and readers, we still regard books and journals as the place to locate our most prestigious texts” (3). The Internet, on the other hand, has neither the history nor the establishment that print has. It also does not have the reputation.

Again building on its history, finances, and establishment, print text outweighs digital text because it has a reputation. People respect print text. It is stable, fixed, permanent. A reader can reasonably rely on a book standing on a library shelf or on a local bookstand. However, a digital, especially online, text may not always be there, and it may not be the same text a reader viewed yesterday (even in our blogs, this idea is true). Also, the printers who print particular genres have reputations to consider as well. If they are to be known as the forefront of quality text, then these printers produce only the highest quality text, text that will be respected, valued, and purchased. These printers are exclusive; they do not print “just anything,” only the materials that meet the standard. In an online environment where “publishing” is free, anyone from admired and educated theorists to fans who only state their biased opinions can be published. Thus, “[f]ew authors today aspire to publish a first novel on the Internet (it is too easy); they still want to be in print” ( Bolter 3).



Works Cited
Bolter, Jay David. Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence, 2001.