Media Coverage of Caravan
Wall Street Journal
Veteran Publisher Osnos Launches On-Demand Nonfiction Book Venture
April 3, 2006
At a time when book publishers are aggressively exploring new distribution opportunities, publishing veteran Peter Osnos has launched a new venture aimed at producing electronic and audio versions of serious nonfiction books.
A group of six nonprofit publishers, a book wholesaler, and a variety of bricks-and-mortar retailers are backing the venture, called Caravan Project. The venture will take books published as hardcovers or paperbacks and make them available simultaneously as “ebooks” — a digital version available on the Web — or in audio format. It will also arrange for print versions of the titles to be produced “on demand” — within 12 hours of a reader request.
“The strategy is to make books available when, where and how readers want them,” said Mr. Osnos, founder and editor-at-large of PublicAffairs Books, an imprint of Perseus Books LLC. “We have to make books as available as other forms of information and entertainment.”
The first books are expected to go on sale in spring 2007. Publishers participating include the University of North Carolina Press, where Caravan is based; Yale University Press; the Council on Foreign Relations Press; the University of California Press; Beacon Press, and the New Press.
Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com
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