books: March 2006 Archives

I think I’ve pretty much settled on going the print-on-demand Lulu.com route with my Princess Bride book, the one that got orphaned when its publisher died. And even though I won’t be published through a traditional publisher, the traditional publishers are rethinking their way of doing business anyway, according to Business Week Online:

A new scheme set to be announced in early April, dubbed the Caravan Project, calls for books to be delivered simultaneously in five formats -- hardcover, digital, audio, print-on-demand, and by chapter.

...

Six nonprofit publishers (three are university presses), No. 2 retailer Borders Group (BGP ), a few independent bookstores (not Tome on the Range, however), and publishing wholesale powerhouse Ingram Industries are participating in Caravan. The first step: Publish 24 books initially across the five formats in early 2007. Funded by a $250,000 MacArthur Foundation grant, the project is relatively small, Osnos admits. "But we don't have to be big," he adds. "We just have to show that this model is irresistible to everyone in the chain -- to authors, publishers, and booksellers. We can't continue to print 10 books to sell 6." Adds Tom Dwyer, director for adult trade books at Borders: "We never want to underestimate the public's desire for information and choices. This lets us put our foot in the water."

And it doesn’t want to. I mean, look at the guy they just hired to write their SF book reviews. Dave Itzkoff claims to like SF, but he doesn’t even pretend not to be full of self-loathing for doing so:

HERE'S a question I don't expect to come anywhere close to answering by the end of this column: Why does contemporary science fiction have to be so geeky?

As that lone subway traveler who still occasionally rides to work brandishing a dog-eared edition of "A Canticle for Leibowitz" or "The Illustrated Man," I realize I'll never enjoy even a fraction of the social standing afforded to the umpteenth passenger who is just now cracking open a mint-condition copy of "The Kite Runner" or a fresh paperback of "A Million Little Pieces" purchased after it was discredited, and I don't expect this to change any time soon.