The New York Times' recent article about print-on-demand books reminded me of a discussion I had with Tom Evslin six months ago.Evslin took his novel hackoff.com onto the web with free podcasts and print versions. His pioneering work just made my greatest hits list, offering a solution that the Times article doesn't mention...
"I think giving electronic content away – both text and audio – is an excellent way for an author to establish readership and create buzz for the eventual offline edition. This is particularly true for a debut author like me.
"The traditional publishers are the gatekeepers of fiction. It is very hard to get a self-published book reviewed or even treated with respect. But I believe all of that is due to change. Bloggers are an avenue around gatekeepers in many ways.
"And the Blook format (a blog on a book) both gives readers a chance to try before they buy and also appeals to the ever increasing number of blog readers. The blook format also meant that we could use the tools like RSS syndication which had already grown up around blogs as a way to reach readers."
One other aspect of POD mentioned briefly in the Times article was that it is moving us away from thinking of the book as a fixed object. Having had books published conventionally and with POD, I like the fact that I can correct errors that might otherwise be embarrassingly enshrined forever (for example, in a book I had published in 1979, a character refers to a "silicone chip" -- a hilarious slip over the past 25 years, but one that got past my editor and copy editor in those days before anyone even had word processors).
With POD, authors can easily do what Whitman did with his various versions of Leaves of Grass. One idea I've toyed with is subtly changing the book each time a copy is bought, which would mean that no two people have the exact identical copy of the same title.
(I don't know how the ISBN people feel about this, however.)
Posted by: Richard | July 24, 2006 12:45 PM | Permalink to Comment