Keeping Current with Current Affairs Books
If you publish in the current affairs category, the question of when to publish is a biggie.
Michelle Shepard published an account of the Omar Khadr case in May called Guantanamo’s Child. Judging by the covers of the major newspapers yesterday, the timing couldn’t have been better. Michelle has tirelessly followed Khadr’s plight. The book is very good. But the story is hardly over.
Peter Brantley noted yesterday that publishers are missing the boat by not developing new content channels. We are happy to sit on our hands and let others do it for us.
Seeing the Khadr story still unfolding, I see yet another example of a publisher sitting on its hands. It would hardly be revolutionary to send readers of the book updates as events occurred via a blog or syndication of Shepard’s newspaper articles. That is just not going to happen. Why? Shepard works for a newspaper not for the publisher. The book — and its success — is caught between the two.
Similarly, Jeremy Scahill wrote an expose of Blackwater in Februrary 2007. Nation Books created a website with a blog included. When the book tour ended the blog went dark. Now Scahill is back with an 2nd edition. What happened to this story in the last year and a half? I am certainly not going to buy the book again to find out, but perhaps I would have, had the publisher kept me engaged on the blog.
In neither of these cases does the publisher have to hire a software developer to build an iPhone app, they simply have to see beyond the product and put the reader first.
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