I’ve been thinking lately about conceptualizing a book as a machine, partly because I was pondering the choice of that word in the message on Woody Guthrie’s guitar, and partly because “machine” is a broad category which is useful for considering the different ways books can work, which is on my mind a lot these days as I release some books and work on others.

A machine is “a device that directs and controls energy to produce a certain effect.” A book directs and controls the reader’s intell...