Binding Media: Hybrid Print-Digital Literature from Across the Americas

Far from causing the ＂death of the book,＂ the publishing industry’s adoption of digital technologies has generated a multitude of new works that push the boundaries of literature and its presentation. In this fascinating new work, Élika Ortega proposes the notion of ＂binding media＂ - a practice where authors and publishers ＂fasten together＂ a codex and electronic or digital media to create literary works in the form of hybrid print-digital objects. Examining more than a hundred literary works from across the Americas, Ortega argues that binding media are not simply experimentations but a unique contemporary form of the book that effectively challenges conventional regional and linguistic boundaries. Furthermore, the book demonstrates that binding media have remained marginal in the publishing industry due to technological imperatives like planned obsolescence and commercial ones like replicability and standardization that run counter to these bespoke literary projects. Although many binding media and other hybrid publishing initiatives have perished, they’ve left behind a wealth of material; collecting and tracing the residues of these foreshortened projects, Ortega builds a fascinating history of hybrid publishing. Ultimately, this essential account of contemporary book history highlights the way binding media help illuminate processes of cultural hybridization that have been instigated by the expediency of globalized digital technologies and transnational dynamics.

Élika Ortega is Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Colorado, Boulder.