Marketing the Bolano
Graphs, Maps, Trees
Melville House has attempted to square the circle with “Hybridbook,” which it’s describing as a book/ebook combination. They are rolling out the Hybridbook in conjunction with the publication of their five “Duel” novellas (which in itself is a smart marketing move).
I like Melville a lot, and they’ve done some absolutely great marketing and publishing in the past, so I’m very interested to see where this goes, but I’m not totally sure that Hybridbook v.1 is right. Here is how the concept is described in the press release:
Intended to help brick-and-mortar booksellers sell copies of print books, the program offers extensive ancillary digital materials, such as essays, maps, illustrations, and other primary source material that will be available to purchasers of print books through a QR (Quick Response) code printed inside the book. Smart phone owners simply scan the QR code to receive a download of the material. (The Illuminations can also be downloaded via the internet or email.) . . .
“It’s a treasure trove for readers and a selling point for booksellers,” says Johnson. “For example, The Illumination for the HybridBook version of Anton Chekhov’s The Duel contains an essay on dueling by Thomas Paine, poems by Lord Byron, philosophy by Nietzsche, an anti-dueling church sermon, an argument in favor of dueling by a U.S. Senator, and the rules to the game of vint—a game that plays a role in the plot,” says Johnson. “In the Illumination for Giacomo Casanova’s The Duel you’ll find a comic essay by Mark Twain on French dueling and an account of a famous duel fought from hot air balloons. And there’s so much more—maps, cartoons, recipes, photographs, paintings—to enhance the reader’s experience.”
Here are my reservations: first off, to my ears this sounds like footnotes available via a QR code. And secondly, I’m not sure that books like The Duel by Anton Chekhov or The Duel by Joseph Conrad are the kinds of books that benefit from bonus material. Obviously there’s a perception that’s very widespread right now that any book can be made better with the addition of “value added” content, but I think with time this conventional wisdom is going to come to look foolish.
I’d argue that a Melville title like Spurious, with its reality-meets-fiction feel and its wealth of purposely obscure words, would be a much more appropriate title to add some bonus material to than the Duel books.
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[...] have pointed out this content is not actually interactive. According to Scott Esposito’s blog, Conversational Reading, “this sounds like footnotes available via a QR code.” Of course, the [...]
I think an interesting tangent to this is the increased ease of “research” which accompanies the internet age. Personally, I’ve wondered whether this might obligate writers, and particularly bloggers, to stricter research ethics.
In this case, the broader ease of research brought about by the internet, begets a deeper interest in a books facets. This may be what Melville House is trying to capitalize on.
Instead of a presumption about ‘duels’, the ancillary materials can substantiate, clarify, or offer differing views of the elements of ‘duels’.
Hello,
This is Paul Oliver of Melville House and I want to thank you for the coverage. I for one have been a longtime fan of Conversational Reading. I wish you would have taken a look at the additional materials first before this, so let me clear up a couple of things.
The HybridBook leads to a legitimate and extremely diverse collection of writing about the book in question. These anthologies are hundreds of pages long in some cases, which is outlined in the press release you refer to. Entire short stories, poems, essays and commentary – both by the author and by other noted scholars and writers contemporary to the writer – are included within the Illuminations anthology. It is meant to be as much a teaching aid as it is an entertaining look at the realm from which the book emerged.
I would argue that The Duel x5 release is perfect for such a concept, as we have included something on top of the scholarly materials, which we are calling The Duelist’s Supplement. It provides, just as the previous commenter has alluded to, a great depth of perspectives and readings on the subject of duels and dueling. As lurid as the concept of dueling seems today, it was once a major societal concern and a great deal of writing was produced for and against the culture of “affairs of honor”
Among the Illuminations for The Duel x5 you will find complete renderings of various code duellos, fencing manuals, trial speeches by Francis Bacon, essays by the likes of Thomas Paine, as well as additional stories and poems all concerning duels. The stories and poetry, by the way, include writings from authors as diverse as Emily Dickinson to Guy de Maupassant, Pushkin to O. Henry. So as you can now see these materials are vastly different from a collection of footnotes. They are designed to be didactic and entertaining, while a footnote (outside of a David Foster Wallace book) is only didactic.
I hope this clears that up. Plus this is just the launch for the HybridBook, we do plan on including other titles and different types of material. Now… If we could only make it so Spurious could distill Plymouth Gin…
Hi Paul:
Thanks for the extra information. I’m a big fan of Melville House books and am glad to see that you are pushing the envelope for print books!
As I hope I made clear in my post, I wasn’t objecting to the amount of information so much as the nature of it. While it’s cool to have a whole bunch of info about dueling to go with the Duel titles–in fact, hundreds of pages worth–I don’t see this as that much of a bonus. To my mind, it comes more under the rubric of “bonus material for bonus material’s sake” than an innovative, organic expansion of a title suited to the hybridbook genre. It’s my opinion that, though this material may have some legit uses–classrooms, perhaps, as you note–it’s something that the average consumer won’t get that much out of in the long run.
These are just my subjective opinions. (I don’t much care for bonus material in most media (DVDs, ebooks, etc) unless it really is an organic part of the final product.) And I will of course keep my eye on Melville House to see where you all go next with this concept.