How to Publish an Insta-Book Without Alienating Your Vendors

Earlier this week, in a post outlining the beef between indie booksellers and Chelsea Green, reference was made to the electronic edition of George Soros‘s The New Paradigm of Financial Markets as an example of how a publisher could conceivably rush a book into the hands of readers before a standard print edition is ready to ship.: “I don’t recall much outrage from the bookselling community over that or any refusal to stock the printed book when it was finally ready.”

PublicAffairs publisher Susan Weinberg wanted to clarify that the Soros book was not introduced to the public under the conditions of exclusivity that Chelsea Green has given Amazon.com for the early edition of Obama’s Challenge. “We did release the e-book first, to all e-book providers,” Weinberg emailed. “It was made available on April 3, 2008. The printed book began shipping in May, again to all booksellers at the same time.”

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