Book Commerce Book Carnival: An Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

First paragraph: Until early this year, an individual interested in, or professionally involved with, the twenty-first-century world of books could travel the globe incessantly, attending book fairs, writers’ festivals, and readers’ conventions. Our roving reader, writer, publisher, or other agent in the communications circuit of the book is a literary Carmen Sandiego, darting from country to country, crossing genres, finding herself at a festival on a ferry, a canal boat, or a train. Occasionally Carmen’s passage, and thus the whole communications circuit itself, might be inhibited by the consciousness of her carbon footprint, impeded by immigration policy and visa restrictions, or cancelled due to pandemic disease.