Book - The Sequel

Susan Weinberg, publisher at PublicAffairs, talked about the publication of a book by her parent company, Perseus Books Group, to showcase how technology and collaboration can change the publishing industry. Publication took place over the course of forty-eight hours at BookExpo America 2009 in the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City from Thursday 4:00 p.m. to Saturday 4:00 p.m. Ms. Wienberg was interviewed in the convention center on Saturday, May 30, 2009, and explained how the book was being published. The text of Book - The Sequel: First Lines from the Classics of the Future by Inventive Imposters (PublicAffairs; May 30, 2009), edited by Clive Priddle, was obtained by “crowd sourcing.” A website, www.bookthesequel.com, was set up where people were invited for a month to contribute the first line of an imaginary sequel to any book. Geoff Nunberg was invited to write an introduction. Over twenty publishing companies collaborated on the project. At 4 p.m. Thursday they started close