Very interesting post on The Valve about the future of humanities scholarship, the academic press, tenure, and alternative media (a.k.a. the InterWebs). A taste:

It’s worth beginning with a somewhat prior question about the future of the academic book, however: whether the fetishization of the monograph as the gold standard of publishing in the humanities is misguided in and of itself, not simply in the ways that such an obsessive focus obscures other worthy forms of scholarship (most notably the article), but also in its failure to recognize that the book might simply not be the best form for scholarly communication in the first place. Not long ago, I overheard a colleague tell a student that scholarly books are not meant to be read but rather consulted. If this is how we consume research in the humanities—read the book’s introduction for the overall argument; read the chapter that most clearly applies to our own questions for the detailed analysis—then is the production of the book itself no more than a vanity?

Read "On the Future of Academic Publishing, Peer Review, and Tenure Requirements"