ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter Franck Cochoy examined a new sociotechnical system that attempts to answer the age-old problem of in vino veritas: how to make wine talk. As he put it, the “issue at stake is to establish the proper relationship between what the bottle holds, what the customer likes, and what the label tells of the former to the latter” (Cochoy et al., 2011: this volume, p 53). While wine as a product cannot speak for itself, books are at the opposite end of the spectrum: as a product all they do is throw words at customers. But they throw far too many words for a customer to tell at a glance—as with a bottle of wine—if it is a product they might like. Unlike with a bottle of wine we can at least dip into a book: read a few sentences here and there, try to figure out if we will like it. There is always the blurb on the back cover as well—but such squibs are notoriously unreliable. Even the most drearily written schlock seems capable of attracting a rave endorsement from someone.
