Good Books: When, Where, and How You Want Them
I believe that the biggest challenge for booksellers and the publishers that serve them is to create a new pattern for the way books are sold and read. In a fundamental sense, the bookstore needs to be a showroom for a universe of what is available. It must have efficient ways to deliver that information to readers when and in whatever form they ask for it. That is the goal of the Caravan Project, announced this week (of which I am executive director), in which books will be made available simultaneously in four ways: the traditional hardcover or paperback; instant resupply of these through print-on-demand technology; in digital form either in full or in chapters and as audio downloads. Caravan, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, is a demonstration of how this will work involving six leading non-profit publishers (Beacon Press, University of California Press, New Press, University of North Carolina Press, Yale University Press and The Council on Foreign Relations Press), the wholesaler Ingram, selected Borders stores and a number of independents. When a reader asks for a book, the seller’s answer should always be, “how do you want it?” Too often, books are hard-to-find or available, say, in a format that isn’t the most attractive in terms of price, size or portability.
In today’s world, books have to compete with so much else for peoples’ time that unless they are present when and how the prospective reader wants them, attention will immediately turn elsewhere.
Caravan’s goal is to work with the booksellers which are such vital community assets, places that readers will always enjoy, and make them capable and comfortable with all the ways books are delivered as technologies evolve. I once saw a sign in, of all places, a hotel in the Middle East, that framed for me the way booksellers can help maintain their uniquely important place in the marketplace of ideas and popular destinations: When a customer asks if they have a particular book or can they recommend one, the mantra needs to be “The answer is yes. There is no other answer.” The reader can choose from the menu: hardcover and/or paperback, digital, audio and by chapters, delivered in a timely way.
THE purpose of Caravan, as its motto makes clear, is “Good Books. Five Ways. Right Now.” With this week’s formal announcement, the Caravan Project now moves on to demonstrating how this new system can make books more available and their distribution more efficient. Wish us luck.
Peter Osnos is Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation.
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