Self Publishing

Catalog description

This course considers the histories, technologies, and practices of self-publishing. Students will examine how writers have historically made and circulated texts on their own for different rhetorical purposes — artistic, civic, academic, or entrepreneurial — and have innovated using a variety of technologies in the process. They will then use these disparate contexts and technologies to articulate professional trajectories that make use of emerging and self-made networks and intermediaries as a pathway toward or alternative to traditional sponsorship. Rather than imagine themselves as writers who inevitably must work with large publishing companies or major organizations in order to be heard, students will learn how localized communities (such as those who produce zines, small presses, and e-books), production services (such as print on demand and web hosts), and practices (such as niche marketing and crowdfunding) can support and sustain their writing in the short- and long-term.