Dear BHC members,
Prof. Dr. Corinna Norrick-Rühl and I would like to invite interested BHC members to join a working group on "the business of books" as a late follow-up to conversations at the 2019 meeting of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP).
You need not be a SHARP member to participate, so we hoped this would be of interest to some members of this organization as well.
Hosted primarily on Slack, we hope to assemble a collaborative community that cuts across periods, geographies, and topics but that shares a common interest in the literary marketplace and the economics of publishing, authorship, bookselling, and reading.
Anyone who is interested in thinking and learning about economic frameworks and the book trade can join.
We anticipate 3-4 meetings/events per year, to include:
- Works-in-progress talks with a pre-circulated working paper
- Discussion groups, perhaps a "book club" format for book historical scholarly works
- Informal get-together at the SHARP conference (and potentially BHC)
Ongoing:
- A virtual discussion platform for exchanging data, ideas, and questions that aren’t suited for a more general listserv like this or SHARP-L.
- We would hope to foster running conversations and collaborations.
- We especially hope to foster community among younger and interdisciplinary scholars, researchers who might be reticent to email SHARP-L or H-Business but who would benefit from a running, less formal discussion within this broad, shared interest area.
To reduce everyone’s email and message load, please fill out this Google form requesting to join the working group. If, for whatever reason, you would prefer to avoid Google, you can also email me directly at travis.ross@yale.edu to request to join.
Best,
Travis