WHY IS THIS NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER NOT AN EBOOK?
I raved yesterday about going to the National Book Awards; now I’m trying to catch up on reading the winners I didn’t grab from our table display — and I’ve hit a problem.
Only 3 of the 4 National Book Award winning titles are available as eBooks—Nikky Finney’s collection of poems Head Off & Split is not available digitally. Dianna Dilworth also sharply caught this at eBook Newser, and I wish it was more widely remarked.
I run into this issue when I’m trying to get more obscure titles — but I’m a book nerd and I can live with my tastes being off beat and not always digitally available. But this seems an oversight that’s bigger than my interests.
Head Off & Split is a National Book Award Winner. And yes, I know, I can get it at a bookstore and support my local independent, but I like supporting the new digital publishing start-ups, and I don’t like going back to print. So, I want this in digital.
Which is why, because our platform’s so easy to use, if publisher Triquarterly or Nikky or anyone associated with this project would just send me the manuscript –just send me a word document! or paste it into an email! — I’ll produce a high end, nicely formatted flowable eBook for them in a few days, for free. I’ll do it myself. Again, for free.
I’ll even type the book into our tool if that’s what it takes—if they ok it.
Just someone, let me know. For my own sake. And note that this is an encouraging sign for 2024–you’ve got someone pleading to read a book of poetry as an eBook. Viva culture.
Matthew Cavnar
Matthew@vook.com
Vook
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Poetry is often challenging for eBook developers. But we created a beautiful CSS style sheet for our Walt Whitman eBook a few months back. Feel free to use it!