"The View From Your Window": An Update

10 Nov 2009 11:31 pm

[Re-posted from earlier today. Number of pledges so far: nearly 1300]

We're now heading toward 1500 pledges to buy the Window View book, which makes a 2000 book offset print run feasible, which in turn means that the price is now headed way below $20. We're going to wait a day to nail the exact price down (it could go as low as $18, more than a third off the regular one-off price) - and the more of you who pledge the lower it will go. I don't know about you but crowd-sourcing a bargain is a pretty cool way to buy books. And to get a four-color coffee table/toilet book down below $20 means the chances of getting more regular print products even lower are now high. Imagine getting paperbacks for $10. That should send some shivers up the spines of the book publishing marketing industry.

You can preview the book here at Blurb.com, the print-on-demand company that is publishing it.

It's 200 pages of window views, selected from all the submissions sent in over the past three years, with the front image and the back one picked by you, the readers of the Dish. The book has views on every page - and their contrasts add a whole new dimension to the Dish's most popular feature. And there's a foreword recalling the genesis of the whole idea (yes, at the very beginning, I tried to call the whole thing off, but you kept sending views and I kept posting them).

If you don't want to wait for the lower price, just go to this page and pay $29.95 and you can get your own copy. If you want to add muscle to our offset print run, email us in the next two days at windowbook@theatlantic.com. Write nothing in the text of the email - but in the subject-line simply write the number of books you want to buy: 1, 2, 3 etc. We'll keep this address open until Wednesday lunchtime, after which we'll be able to tell you what price we've been able to secure for the book. Then you can order at the new, hopefully lower, price.

So far, it's working. But the more of you who pledge, the cheaper the book can get. And if we can prove this blog-print-on-demand principle, we can go forward and start publishing other books in similar fashion (we hope to produce both a "Cannabis Closet" and an "It's So Personal" edition below $10).

Email us your pledge here: windowbook@theatlantic.com. We'll keep reporting back on the results.

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