The publishing buzzword of the last few years has undoubtedly been ‘open access’. But typically this has referred to scientific journal publishing, only recently expanding to include humanities research. This article goes further in asking what might an open access literary culture look like? Developments around online publishing, electronic-books, print on demand and digital libraries see publishers facing challenges on every side. How might publishers’ traditional role as gatekeepers of literary culture be similarly usurped in an environment characterized by networked books, wiki-novels and fictional ‘rip and burn’ practices? Outlining three exciting recent experiments in open-access literature, this article considers what the digital future of literature might look like, and what its impact will be on writers, publishers and readers.
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