Godin tends to be too enamored by big ideas for my tastes, but there’s a few ideas in here worth chewing over, specifically how the forced-scarcity of traditional book publishing is giving way to nearly infinite electronic bookshelves.
The structures of books certainly are bounded by the forms of their marketing. One limitation Godin doesn’t mention is the 64 page minimum – this is what you need to be able to put a spine on the book, am essential feature if it’s to show up bookstore shelves. One of my trickiest typesetting assignments back in my nonprofit publishing career was to stretch a 40 page essay to 64 so it could be a book. I used all the tricks of a desperate first year student with class twenty minutes off (the book went on to become one of our bestsellers, if I could have stretched it 96 pages we might have remained solvent).
This book just exaggerated a common phenomenon. Many of our authors had a few great insights that could be adequately shared in the first few chapters. The rest of the books wouldn’t just be my calorie-free margins. There were enougn words to fill up a book but after 70 or 90 pages the reader would have read the most original content and could safely put the book down in the “to be finished later” pile.
Free of book limitations – and book selling limitations – most of these works would habe been far different. some of the more basic questions will remain with us: how do we get our works into the hands of readers, and how we pay the rent while doing it?
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The end of paper changes everything — The Domino Project
Not just a few things, but everything about the book and the book business is transformed by the end of paper. Those that would prefer to deny this obvious truth are going to find the business they lo…
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