About Caravan
What is the Caravan Project?
Imagine a team of travelers — visionaries, artisans, merchants and pilgrims — navigating deserts, sandstorms and mountains toward a common destination. Take away the dust, the heat, the cold and the camels, turn their precious cargo into books, and you have The Caravan Project!
It’s simple. Caravan is a group of book people on a journey to make serious non-fiction available to discerning readers when they want it, where they want it and in the formats they prefer.
There’s never been anything quite like it before. The Caravan Project’s goals include:
- making serious non-fiction books available to a wider audience
- offering these books in a variety of formats that anticipate the needs of readers in the age of digital media
The Caravan Project is funded by grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York,the National Association of College Stores Foundation and is housed at The Century Foundation in the New York.
As a non-profit partnership, Caravan’s goal is to meet the challenges of change.
The project itself does not profit from these transactions. Its mission is solely to serve all who have a stake in quality non-fiction — authors, publishers, wholesalers, retailers, libraries and readers.
Why would we do this?
We believe in the voices that deserve an audience. We believe in the audience that thirsts for a serious read. And for years, we have been involved in the world of publishing. So we set out to find solutions to the technical, marketing and distribution challenges facing the book industry in the digital age.
The traditional practices of publishing and selling books are changing in the digital age. Publishers, who need to gauge the market with pinpoint accuracy, are often left with too many or too few books in stock. Facing high audio production costs, publishers on tight budgets simply avoid these formats. Booksellers limited to hardcovers and paperbacks are experiencing declining sales as their customers turn to alternative formats.
At the end of this chain, readers grow increasingly frustrated, unable to find the books they want, when they want them, in the formats they prefer.
Caravan unites and serves the interests of all who have a stake in books. Using the technologies of our time, we work to overcome the limitations of traditional book publishing and selling, and infuse the industry with a renewed vitality that benefits all.