Note: This is Part II of a two-part series by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, TeleRead’s e-book editor.
Could e-books be the next step for Gather and other community sites? I’m in office of Tom Gerace, the energetic CEO of this literate online community, and I watch his bluish-green eyes light up at the prospect. Why not put together “The Best of Gather” as an e-book?
“Publishing compendiums is a really interesting avenue for us,” Gerace says over the fizz of the black-cherry drink on his desk. He’s as effervescent as the sofa.
He tells me that “fotolog, which is a big photography sharing site in Brazil, is about to come out with their first collection of photographs by fotolog members. I think Gather has the potential to publish poetry books, short story collections.” Gerace might release them during the Christmas gift-giving season.
Site growth first
First Gerace wants to grow the site from its 10,000+ members and more than 500 user-created groups, everything from the Haiku Group to gardening forums; and also “we probably need a partner for e-books.” But once that happens, Gather’s possible e- or p-books could benefit from the built-in word-of-mouth, given the community approach. Later, as I see it, might come acclaim and great reviews by major industry publications such as Publishers Weekly and Kirkus.
But how to determine what’s “best” for a “Best of” collection? Well, this could be done through seasoned editors rather than the ratings system—to help troll-proof the selection process. Gather also could see how the editors fared this way compared to looking through the usual slush piles. They would have existing track records, after all, from traditional publishing,
Fiction vs. nonfiction
Other issues abound, such as fiction vs. nonfiction and wide-audience books vs. localized books (for example, about Boston—home of many Gather members). And how many books might start out as Gather material and how many would have other origins but appear with its imprint?
Then there’s the matter of the ultimate purchasers of the books themselves. Should this readership overlap exactly with the Gather audience?
Maybe not, but I suspect that Gather-promoted books will find more popularity with the fans of Malcolm Gladwell and E. Annie Proulx than with those of Dr. Phil and Danielle Steele.
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Moderator’s note: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti, a Gather member with a top rating, joined to research this article. The rating came quickly and naturally. Vindicates our judgment in having her as a TeleBlog regular.
There are two barriers to gather going to ebooks. First, legal issues. Web Community sites usually don’t get advance permission for additional redistribution possibilities (although that could change). It requires negotiating licenses, royalties, etc. It ain’t easy.
Second, there really is not the kind of widespread availability of portable reading devices to justify the effort. Not yet anyway. the problem is that lots of readers just don’t like reading from a laptop or monitor for long periods of time.
That said, XML/XML-rpc should make it a trivial effort to create ebooks from xml content.