Seemed like a good opportunity to christen by Branch invite.

I'm sort of with Guy that this seems too open a definition. Also, a cynic might quip that publishing is actually the opposite : "The business regulating the public's access to IP."

Yes, that feels more like a dictionary definition to me (or a Seth Godin-ism).

To me any true definition of publishing would include something about the desire to make your idea/IP/thoughts/feeeeeeelings heard by others.

Not exactly just making available but actively seeking to have it read (consumed) by other people for the purpose of eliciting a reaction.

I'm seriously spitballing here, OBVS. #summerfridayintheoffice

I like that. "Making available" soft pedals an essential function. Like Chris Rock says, drug dealers make drugs available. Publishers gotta promote.

Ami, I think that is a super interesting point... the idea of adding an intention clause to the definition. Adds a nuance to the idea of making public (publicare > publicus), etc.

Jim, I will ask the same question I just did on Twitter... is promotion, distribution, etc. an essential piece of the activity of publishing? Have they always been part of the process?

Goodness. Thanks to Jim, here I am Out on a Limb.

I like also that it provides a line in the sand between an outlet like Smashwords and an outlet like Random House. Both outlets will put your book up for sale in as many locations as possible, but only one will seek to generation conversation around your title.

@Brett I would say always. From cuneiform to the printing press, the goal has always been mass distribution.

Production is essential. Distribution is essential, I think. Promotion? I'm not sure, except insofar as it forwards distribution, which is essential. But Brett, to something you said on Twitter. I'm not sure there was "publishing" before the printing press. To make things interesting, in fact, I'll stipulate it. There was no "publishing" before the printing press.

Agree with Ami. Without some powerful impulse of dissemination, there's really little purpose to publishing.

So far, the pieces that continue to emerge repeatedly are: 1. making [something] public, 2. intention of action in doing so, and 3. distribution.

This is turning into a very interesting discussion, indeed.

Before the printing press, there was dissemination, but no publishing proper, since the intent was not to make works widely available -- or public.

Anybody else I should invite? Just give me a Twitter handle.

You're wrong, Jim, I feel quite sure that some desert rat hammered out four or five copies of some crazy edict from the local honcho and handed out those four or five stones to tell more than one person the new order .. I would love to know if said desert rat called this "publishing" or just "a lot of work."

Brett, how does "intention of action" differ from "distribution?" Are you just defining the fact that sometimes the spirit is willing (to distribute) but the damned published thing doesn't move off the shelves?

@Jim So Publish as a word in English: first use is 14th century. Printing Press is 15th. So the concept of this existed outside of and before use of the tool.

Not entirely sure we can associate fully with the machine. Also, many well known examples of literature exist from before that time. Which were written, distributed, etc. in various ways.

Jim, maybe we lost Guy. Did he fall off the branch? (This is so A Separate Peace.)

@Porter He is "observing." Look like you're having a good time and we'll drag him in. ; )

@Porter I think intention refers to something other than simply distribution. Intention, here, seems to be the existential "Other," meaning that it has to be for an audience, or the public. Then, there is the activity (and associated activities) or distribution with can only come after the published thing is complete.

Yes, that's it, Brett, and more nicely said than my desert rat -- people were getting publishy on stone tablets and things before Mr. Gutenberg gave us non-DRM books.

Legitimately just laughed out loud @ non-DRM books. Love it.

Soooo (on intention) ... it precedes distribution. Can intention ever PRECLUDE distribution?
(Bwahahaha.)

(Yes, on the non-DRM part, however, Gutenberg bragged about it 47% less than the O'Reilly people.)

Pretty interesting, actually, that it didn't appear as a word until the 14th Century. (I had braced for being much wronger than that.) So it does appear as the rise of the individual begins to emerge, perhaps even pushing the printing press?

God help me, I hope Klout tracks Branchly conversations.

In Gutenberg's defense, he wasn't working to support a disruptive business model and monetize.

Which begs the question: was early restricted access of printed materials, only learned, rich, etc., a form of DRM? #WHOAFRIDAY

<Still noodling at the idea of intention precluding distribution> If this could be the case, then I think we would have to eliminate distribution from the equation.

Jim - in terms of individualism, we're saying the Enlightenment's dynamic gave rise to publishing?

Brett - probably all of those were restrictive elements from time to time and situation to situation. Plus sheer economics and relatively low runs (availability). And maybe even some BAD WRITING going on. ("Whoops, Gutenberg! You mean everybody can read this crap I just wrote??" )

Well, speaking of bad writing, take Dan Brown. Let's say the Illuminati "publish" a terribly subversive text guaranteed to blow up the Pope's corgi if it ever gets out. The "intention" is not to "distribute" because the Illums don't want everybody to be able to blow up the Pope's corgi. Only the Holy Nasties (the Illuminati) get to do that. So that is publishing with an intent to provide info but only within a tight circle of bad-movie personalities. Hence, that intention precludes distribution. But eventually prompts Dan Brown to write yet another appalling piece of crap that gets made into a film far more expensive than the Holy Father's air-conditioning bill.

It wasn't DRM, per se, because natural restrictions conveniently interceded in ways that supported power structures. DRM is perverse precisely because it seeks to outfit media with restrictions it does not actually have -- so that it resembles a previous medium on which a business model is based. (HarperCollins' 26-lend library books are the most striking example of this.)

Guy's not going to like it, but I'm getting that Shirky feeling that technological development runs in the direction of making "published" the default for all IP. (At which point, "publishing" -- as we know it -- is gone.)

Jim. In Shirking this, you're saying that it ain't IP until it is "published?"

So, Porter, what you're saying is that little has changed.

Though to your Papal allegory, I think small distro is still distro. The Illuminati Nasties still want to distribute the information to their own. The public can be limited, as is such in the case of the damning corgi evidenced above, but that has still not entirely precluded distribution.

Ah, OK, Brett, I can except "publishing" but only to one's fellow Nasties. Then do we need "intention" in the mix? Isn't the default ... distro?

In other words, Jim, I give you Michelangelo's The David. (You're welcome.) Until it's unveiled by Michelangelo, is it not IP? Because until then it was not "published?"

Wow @ the Shirky word play going on. Well done, sirs. Well done.

In eliminating intention, I feel like we've come full circle. 1.) Making [something] available to the public. Which would implicitly suggest SOME form of distribution.

Porter. On the individualism front, I'm just playing around with the idea. If the word "Publish" -- as in make public -- doesn't emerge until the 14th century, I think that's interesting, and perhaps prefigures an impulse that leads to the printing press, i.e. the very idea that something should be widely available.

On the Shirky front, no IP can be private and still be IP, but it will make less and less sense to withhold IP from publication -- while seeking a publisher, say -- rather than just putting it out there. In the case of Michelangelo, today David would be a YouTube video and it would be published whether MA got a commission or not.

But I've taken this thread way off track ...

Back to intention.

sorry guys stupid work calls. I will think independently re: publishing but I love this platform.

Thanks for testing it out with us, Ami. I probably gotta back to work, too.

Thanks all for a super interesting Friday diversion. And for a great discussion. Have a great weekend!

Ami, as ever, knows her timing. I should jump off, too, to prepare for Friday Drinking. But I like this convo, too. Yes, Brett, I think we're back to the squarest One. And yes, Jim, Michelangelo would be on YouTube. Thank God he didn't survive to see cat pictures.

Later, everyone. I'm going to close this "Branch," as I apparently have the power to do.