The Worst of Both Worlds: The Familiar's E-Books and Their Unhandy Limitations

Abstract

The commercial longevity and actual continuity of Mark Z. Danielewski’s series The Familiar was, by default, subject to the audience’s enthusiasm about it. But the latter hinges on a number of factors, which include not only the appeal of the plot and the author’s cult status, but also, importantly, the material conditions of the reading experience and the broader patterns of the economics of contemporary publishing industry. The argument of this essay considers the characteristics and effects of The Familiar’s somewhat inglorious digital incarnation, to infer that the absence of a ‘proper’ (i.e. medium-specific) and functional (i.e. responsive to highlighting, annotations, word selection and search, translation, and other functions afforded by digital devices) e-book edition significantly factored into the causes of the “pause” in the series’ progression, announced by the writer on February 2nd, 2018.