by Rogier van Bakel?
Talk about a public library. Located in the back of a wooden building on sleepy College Street in Burlington, Vermont, is a voyeuristic book lover's treat. Hundreds of unpublished manuscripts line the shelves of the Brautigan Library. They are contributed by writers who are as-yet-undiscovered geniuses (the more generous assessment), or semidyslexic wannabes (the crueler option). Anyone can contribute a self-penned novel, a cookbook, an autobiography, a poetry collection, 25 years' worth of grocery lists, or a treatise on the mating habits of polar bears. A one-time US$50 fee, to cover expenses, is enough to get any manuscript accepted. Named after the late counterculture writer Richard Brautigan, the nonprofit library wants to raise awareness of "the grass-roots level of our culture," and steer the "street-level view away from the ivory tower."
The Brautigan would seem to be a perfect cyberspace site. Bob Cham, its vice president, agrees. But for now, it exists only in the physical world. Says Cham: "We simply don't have the funds or the staff to put our entire content on the Net." Nonetheless, Cham is setting up a Web site, which will feature the library's catalog and a synopsis of every book, plus "some kind of search engine."
Meanwhile, cybersurfers who want to go hunting for obscure literary treasures have several options - as do authors looking to reach a large audience without the backing of a major publisher.
For instance, the Syberbooks BBS will accept an unpublished book, nonexclusively, for $15 a month, after a one-time $25 charge. In return, the Ohio company pays the author 50 cents for each download, and forwards all reader responses. Syberbooks is not an electronic "vanity" press, however, insists founder Harold Nichols. "With reader feedback, writers can go to their agent or a traditional publisher and prove how well their work is already being received."
Montana-based Thunder Mountain Press offers a similar service. For a $50 setup fee, a book will remain on the board for at least six months. Thunder Mountain then pays its writers 25 percent in royalties for each download. Founder Martin Peterson, himself the author of half a dozen books, estimates that there are "250,000 book manuscripts in circulation at any time," and that only 2 percent of these writings will ever make it to press. "There is too much risk for a publisher to stake $25,000 to $50,000 on publishing an unknown author," Peterson says. "That's where we come in. Where else can you reach millions of potential customers for a nominal fee?"|Somehow, though, the online bookstores possess neither the quaintness nor the tranquillity of a place like the Brautigan Library. What's missing from these online literary haunts? For one, the jars of Hellman's mayonnaise that serve as book supports at the Brautigan. And why mayonnaise? It's the last word of Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America.
Wired, 3(9), September 1995
Online Source: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/scans.html?pg=6
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