A New Old Way to Sell Writing

Penguin U.K. is trying a new variation on an old method of selling fiction: the instalment release of a novel called The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters. The book comes in 10 segments, one sent out each week. There is a limit of 5000 sets to be sold this way, each at the price of £25 (about $47). If they sell all 5000, that's a take of £125,000 ($235,000), which isn't bad, even taking into account the extra expense of postage and handling.

It will be interesting to see how this experiment works. I think it has some potentially fatal flaws, the most serious of which is that the book will be published in one volume in January (it is already out  in the US, priced $26). If the author, Gordon Dahlquist, were famous and had a big fan base of people eager to get their hands on his book before everybody else, the 'must-have' factor might apply. As it stands, however, it's only the sheer novelty of the delivery system that might motivate someone to go for this. Still, it's good to see the publishing industry try something different, and I'll post the results when I know them.