News About the Peep Diaries

news items about the Peep Diaries book

The E-book as Argued on CBC Radio

I was on CBC Radio’s The Current this morning. You can download the podcast here.

I discussed/argued the e-book with journalist Noah Richler and David Kent, President of HarperCollins Canada. It was pretty entertaining. I was coming at it from the perspective of a writer, particularly one without the benefit at this current point in time of a publishing deal with a multinational corporate-owned publisher. (Interestingly enough, the producer who contacted me told me she was having trouble finding a writer willing to talk about e-books and publishing…)

So my take on it: small presses and independents are shut out of the chain bookstores that comprise the majority of the marketplace. Furthermore, even those writers who are published by a big company are finding themselves marginalized if they can’t generate significant sales. From that point of view, the e-book can only help writers who won’t find their books stacked up at Indigo or Barnes & Noble anytime soon. 

Obviously this is a complicated and divisive issue but I think the situation is relatively dire in terms of access — there are 10,000 plus books published every year in Canada alone, but how many of them will you see browsing through your Superstore? I think the ebook will benefit independents and small presses, and those writers who are increasingly finding for-profit publishing a difficult fit for what they want to achieve. And what about books that fall out of print in a shockingly short amount of time? Things can only get better for writers in terms of ongoing sustained access to the marketplace.

The Book: The Peep Diaries

The Peep Diaries will be Published by City Lights Books in May 2009
ISBN 1991022

Buy The Peep Diaries Right Now:
In the United States: www.citylights.com
In Canada: Chapters/Indigo Amazon:

The Publisher: City Lights

City Lights Books

City Lights Publishers

In June of 1955, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, co-founder of City Lights Bookstore, launched City Lights Publications with the Pocket Poets Series. The first volume was a collection of his own poems, Pictures of the Gone World, which has since become a classic of beat literature and… more...

Author! Author!

Hal Niedzviecki is a writer, culture commentator and editor whose work challenges preconceptions and confronts readers with the offenses of everyday life. He is the author of six books including the novel The Program and the nonfiction book The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves… more...