Millicent Weber: DarntonWatch
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Millicent Weber: DarntonWatch Nicholas Shea1 · Gloria Mulvihill2
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Millicent Weber, author of Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture, aspires to bring the scholarly field of book publishing together with DarntonWatch—a promising new podcast designed to support researchers and disseminate cutting-edge knowledge and practices within the industry. Keywords DarntonWatch · Podcast · Millicent Weber · Paper readings · Roundtable discussions · Independent Publishing Conference · Australian publishing Originating from a flippant line in Ben Hammersley’s article “Audible Revolution,” [1] the now-ubiquitous portmanteau “podcast” was formally inducted into MerriamWebster’s class of 2004 alongside social media, defriend, FOMO, and life hack [2]. This neoteric diction acts as a barometer for the ubiquitousness of technology in daily life, which continues to provide opportunities for innovative formats that were previously dismissed or altogether unexplored. Case in point: early blog-inspired podcasts that were “crudely recorded, barely edited, [and] insular,” as described by Nicholas Quah in “We’re Entering the Era of Big Podcasting,” burgeoned into a media juggernaut that has amassed some 62 million American listeners who are seeking out informative and entertaining content [3]. With her finger on the cultural pulse, author of Literary Festivals and Contemporary Book Culture Millicent Weber decided to capitalize on the disruptive medium through DarntonWatch, a free podcast “designed to support researchers investigating book publishing, circulation, and reading practices to share their talks and papers online” [4]. Weber’s principal motivation in curating the podcast was “to share more widely the substantial but frequently ephemeral research that gets undertaken and presented at conferences… [and] to offer an opportunity that didn’t add unduly to already high workloads, but rather enabled colleagues… to convert existing unpublished work into a more transferable form” (pers. comm.). * Nicholas Shea [email protected] 1
Happy Valley, OR 97086, USA
2
Oregon City, OR 97045, USA
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Publishing Research Quarterly
Aptly, the first ten episodes are a showcase for the 2018 Independent Publishing Conference in Melbourne, an annual Australian publishing industry event run by the Small Press Network [5]. Topics include paper readings on the politics of literary prizes, high-brow literature in self-publishing, cultural policy in relation to publishing and writing, and the value of children’s literature and the new adult genre, as well as a roundtable discussion on the logistics and value of operating teaching presses. The straightforward readings on DarntonWatch serve as an accessible archive for professors, students, and industry professionals free of charge—thus circumventing standard networking practices such as conferences that involve expenses related to admissions, membership, travel, lodging, etcetera. Recorded readin
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