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Juxtaposed to the ongoing fluidity of the Web, the book鈥檚 boundedness and 鈥渋nternal completeness鈥� are what critically set it apart. Now, people have said all sorts of things around the definition of a book, but I feel that as we try to plot the future of publishing, Hugh鈥檚 statement of the essence of bookishness is about as spot-on as any I鈥檝e read. And I think it fits really well with what the scholarly monograph is all about.

And yet鈥�

Even if boundedness and completeness are what we ultimately value about the book (as opposed to other forms), it does not follow that these characteristics are the be-all and end-all of information and media. Or, put better, we needn鈥檛 take boundedness and completeness as a prescription for what serious media ought to be. Our challenge is to look beyond that.

So, for scholarly presses considering their own essence鈥攁nd the role of the monograph in that鈥擨 think it鈥檚 important to not rely on the traditional status of the complete and bounded work as the paradigm.

A scholarly press is in the business of assembling, preparing, and distributing the authoritative voices on the topics in which it specializes. But authority is not going to be sustained by merely resisting the messy fluidity of the Web in favour of the anchor of older institutional forms. Instead, I think authority will only be achieved鈥攊n a new, digital environment鈥攂y a process of organic re-development, by way of going into the fluid webbiness of new media, and in doing so re-establishing the institutions and processes that actually confer it.

As my co-panelist Darcy Cullen鈥攁n acquisitions editor at UBC Press鈥攔ecently pointed out in her excellent new book, , the traditional mode of establishing textual authority is wrapped up in the system of material and visual cues鈥攖he 鈥渂ibliographic codes鈥� or 鈥減aratext鈥濃�攖hat give institutional context to a work. 鈥淭hese elements,鈥� Cullen suggests, quoting bibliographic scholar D.C. Greetham, 鈥榓re the formalist 鈥渆nvelope鈥� without which the book does not have existence, let alone meaning鈥︹�欌��(p13).

While this analysis explicitly and deliberately includes 鈥榚lectronic texts,鈥� we can't simply make a substitution of the materiality of print for the materiality of an ebook (as the Kindle and its peers attempt). The new materiality of texts in the digital age is something that is much richer and more complex, and it has only begun to unfold for us. We will have to look to the evolving information landscape of the Web and digital media to gain any sense of how this new materiality鈥攁nd the authority structures that accrue鈥攁ctually plays out.

In light of this, Hugh McGuire鈥檚 project is a milestone. It represents a critical step towards (or perhaps a critical achievement in) reducing 鈥渢he book鈥� to its fundamental webby fluidity (as opposed to its stable ink and paperness), while preserving that guiding metaphor of the bounded, internally complete book. This is a fulcrum point. What Pressbooks allows is the deconstruction of the book鈥檚 traditional materiality, allowing it to then be re-constructed in a web-native mode, without throwing away the essence of what a book is, especially for those genres like the monograph, literary novel, extended memoir, that we hold most dear in our hearts and on our bookshelves.

How then will the authoritative structure and form of the book (or perhaps, of its successor?) be re-established in a web-native mode? We don鈥檛 yet know鈥攖he current form of the ebook is pretty underwhelming on this front鈥攂ut it strikes me that we won鈥檛 figure it out until we become 鈥渨eb native鈥� ourselves, taking our cherished notions of what books and scholarly authority are with us.

Darcy Cullen鈥檚 book further elaborates on a critical notion, drawn from Peter Shillingsburg, that the structures of bookishness and bibliographic authority well precede a text鈥檚 publication鈥攑recede even initial contact with an editor or publisher鈥攂ecause the structure and form of the book is always already in the minds of authors. We have all grown up with the book and its institutions. And so it鈥檚 not until we as a culture internalize the structures and possibilities of the digital, networked age that we will begin to truly write for it. We need to go through this time of de- and re-construction before we can (again, organically) begin to re-imagine what the book, or its successor, might be like.