The Unbound Book - Academic Publishing in the Age of the Infinite Archive - Abstract

Aug 26, 2026

The essay examines how open access and digital publishing reshape academic authority and the traditional functions of peer review and scholarly prestige. It argues that electronic forms make books feel less fixed and unified, more liquid and living through continual writing, editing, annotation, critique, updates, and re-ordering. In this context, the “unbound book” is treated as a transformative but potentially viable future form rather than a mere dissolution of the book.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages41

Reading Time1 h 3 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Open access and digital publishing

The book as liquid and living

Disruption and the infinite archive

Defining “unbound” and the limits of the concept

Carrión and the book as a container

On the unbound book: academic publishing in the age of the infinite archive Hall, G. Author post-print (accepted) deposited in CURVE June 2013 Original citation & hyperlink: Hall, G. (2013) On the unbound book: academic publishing in the age of the infinite archive. Journal of Visual Culture, volume 12 (3): 490-507. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470412913502032](http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1470412913502032) Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s) . The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. This document is the author’s post-print version of the journal article, incorporating any revisions agreed during the peer-review process. Some differences between the published version and this version may remain and you are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it. CURVE is the Institutional Repository for Coventry University [http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open](http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open) Gary Hall The Unbound Book: Academic Publishing in the Age of the Infinite Archive Abstract Thanks to open access and the likes of Blurb, Issuu, Scribd, Kindle Direct Publishing, iBooks Author [and AAAAARG.org](and AAAAARG.org), publishing a book is something nearly everyone can do today in a matter of minutes. Yet what is most interesting about electronic publishing is not so much that bringing out a book is becoming more like blogging or vanity publication, with authority and certification provided as much by an author’s reputation or readership, or the number of times a text is visited, downloaded, cited, referenced, linked to, blogged about, tagged, bookmarked, ranked, rated or ‘liked’, as it is by conventional peer-review or the prestige of the press. All of those criteria still rest upon and retain fairly conventional notions ofthe book, the author, publication and so on. Far more interesting is the way certain developments in electronic publishing contain at least the potential for us to perceive the book as something that is not completely fixed, stable and unified, with definite limits and clear material edges, but as liquid and living, open to being continually and collaboratively written, edited, annotated, critiqued, updated, shared, supplemented, revised, re-ordered, reiterated and reimagined. So much so that, as some have indeed suggested, perhaps soon we will no longer call such things books at all, e-or otherwise. On the other hand, perhaps ‘book’ is as good a name as any since-as examples as apparently different as the Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio show – books, historically, have always been liquid and living: electronic publishing has simply helped make us more aware of the fact. Word count: 7,856 Key words: open, copyright, author, liquid, living, book, gift It is often said that the book today is being dramatically disrupted: that in the era of online authorship, comment sections, personal blogs, RSS feeds, embeddable videos, podcasts, interactive information visualisations, and texts being generally connected to a network of other information, data and mobile media environments in what amounts for some to an infinite archive, the book is in the process of being diluted, dislocated, dispersed, displaced. So much so that if the book is to have any future at all in the context of these other modes of reading, writing and forms of material support it will be in unbound form--a form which, while radically transforming the book may yet serve to save it and keep it alive. i Yet what is the unbound book? Can the book be unbound? • The Oxford Dictionary Online defines the term

FAQs

How does open access change academic publishing according to the text?

Open access and digital platforms make it easy to publish quickly, shifting authority away from conventional certification toward usage, engagement, and visibility while peer review and press prestige remain influential.

What does the text mean by the book being “liquid and living”?

It describes a book as continually co-authored and transformable—ongoing writing, editing, annotation, critique, updating, and re-ordering rather than a static fixed object.

Is there truly an “unbound book” in the essay’s argument?

The text presents a tension: it asks whether the book can be unbound, then notes Ulises Carrión’s view that there is no such thing as an unbound book because the book is fundamentally a container for text.

Aug 26, 2026

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