Concerned with the book, not with the people involved. It is a map, not a circuit.

External forces (intellectual, political, legal and religious, economic, social and cultural (taste) bear pressure on the events. Indeed, publication is often influenced by factors not intrinsic to the text.

“It is only in theory, in the simple context of a diagram, that these forces can be disentangled from each other, or from the special circumstances of the creation and survival of books” (61).

Nonetheless, publication is at the top because it is “the point of departure”: without the will to publish, nothing will happen. “The decision to publish, not the creation of a text, is, then, the first step in the creation of a book” (54).

John Peter Zenger (1697-1746) was a German-American printer, publisher, editor, and journalist in New York City. He was a defendant in a landmark legal case in American jurisprudence that determined that truth was a defense against charges of libel and “laid the foundation for American press freedom” (Wikipedia). (See p. 59 of our text.)