Authors OnLine -

The following article appeared in the Guardian a year ago and is yet another vindication of the rise of companies such as AuthorsOnline.

Bestselling author's move to overthrow conventions of the book trade

Lawrence Donegan
Sunday September 22, 2002
The Observer

Dave Eggers, author of the bestselling A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius , has a new novel published in America this weekend - but there will no point in fans rushing to a major bookstore to buy a copy.

In what has been described as either courageous entrepreneurship or vainglorious folly, Eggers has eschewed the normal publishing route taken by writers of his stature - and the seven-figure advance that comes with it - and issued the novel himself.

You Shall Know Our Velocity, which tells of two young Americans who travel the world trying to give away money, is only available at independent bookshops across the US and from McSweeney's, the New York-based magazine and website founded by the writer. The book industry's retail giants, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Amazon.com, have been cut out of the action.

Just 10,000 copies of the book, printed in Iceland and then shipped to a warehouse in Boston, are available at $20, around $10 less than the price charged by mainstream publishers for books by authors of Eggers's stature.

The book has already generated enormous interest, with an excerpt in the New Yorker magazine and numerous articles congratulating the author on achieving a great marketing coup.

'Eggers has accomplished a daring trifecta; it merges the long tradition of self-publishing (think Walt Whitman, Thomas Paine) with modern technology (sales over the internet), while sharing the spoils only with friends (the independent bookstores who were the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of McSweeney's),' the Wall Street Journal declared last week.

Eggers remains downbeat. 'It might work on this scale; it might not - we really have no idea,' he said in a recent interview. 'I think that if you care about writing, then you care about how it makes its way into the world, and self-publishing is one good way to make sure it comes out the way you'd envisioned. But we'll see. It could all go horribly, horribly wrong.'

That is the outcome desired by some members of the mainstream publishing industry who have long considered Eggers to be a troublesome maverick and who see his latest venture as a quixotic attempt to undermine their dominance of the book world.

Others see the author's move as another signal that the publishing industry is undergoing a revolution. They include Jason Epstein, co-founder of the New York Review of Books. He says: 'He is not the first author to take the self-publishing route but he is probably the most well-known, and all power to him. Whether it will work, I don't know, but at least he is showing some life and passion and ingenuity. If it fails, he will always have the built-in hedge of going the more traditional way. Publishers would be eager to have his book.'

A former Random House editor and innovative figure in the New York publishing world, Epstein is the author of Book Business, which foresaw the demise of the publishing industry in its current form. Inflated advances for big-name authors, ever decreasing profit margins and the emergence of new technologies will mean an end to retail giants such as Borders and big publishing houses. Taking their place will be smaller enterprises with fewer overheads and more immediate access to the reading public, like McSweeney's and the growing self-publishing industry, Epstein argues.

In the past 18 months, almost 40 self-published novels by authors who couldn't generate interest in their manuscripts first time round have subsequently been bought up by major publishing companies after selling significant numbers through mail order and over the internet. 'The self-publishing stigma has been replaced with high-figure advances and full-page ads in the New York Times Book Review,' says M.J. Rose, a columnist with Wired magazine and a self-published author.

Another threat to publishing's behemoths comes from Epstein himself, who is a partner in a company developing what is effectively an 'ATM [cash machine] for books'. The machine, invented by a St Louis-based car engineer, Jeff March, is around the size of an office photocopier. It can take a digital file, print it and bind it into a paperback book within minutes. 'This means a reader anywhere in the world can go to the machine, type in the name of the book he wants, and have it in his hands. We already have a working prototype which produces 100 pages in three minutes at a cost of one cent per page,' Epstein says.

Three Billion Books, the company formed by Epstein and colleagues, is already in negotiation with the World Bank to introduce the Print-on-Demand machine into the developing world, where it would help the dissemination of badly-needed text books. The bank has an extensive catalogue of books on agriculture and public health which it currently ships to the Third World at enormous cost.

'One of the great advantages of this technology is that you could publish books in countless languages. There would be no problems with shipping or with having too much inventory. All you need to do is the translation and then make a digital file,' says Epstein.

Such machines could be up and running in the developing world within two years.

Retailers and publishing firms in the West will do as much as they can to stall the development of this technology in North America and Europe, Epstein predicts. 'But eventually the publishing world will see that it works and will have no choice but to accept it. The horse and buggy trade did whatever it could to discourage the automobile, but eventually the automobile proved its point.'

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003