MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
July 30 – August 6, 2009 Edition
Unpublished Vonnegut Stories to Become E-Book
NEW YORK, NY/Authorlink News/07/28/09–Delacorte Press, a hardcover imprint of the Random House Publishing Group division of Random House, Inc. and the longtime book publisher of Kurt Vonnegut, said last week it will release fourteen never-before-published short stories by the late and celebrated author (1922-2007) as single-story e-books prior to and in conjunction with the publication of a new short fiction collection, Look at the Birdie. The book goes on sale October 20, 2009. This is believed to be one of the first such short-fiction digital-publishing efforts with an author of Kurt Vonnegut’s magnitude, as well as one of the few e-book efforts focused specifically on individual short stories.
The first of the single-story e-books, “Hello Red,” will be available through regular e-book retailers on August 25, 2009, eight weeks prior to the release of the Look at the Birdie hardcover. Five weeks later, on
September 29, 2009, “The Petrified Ants” will be available for downloadable purchase to readers. With the publication of Look at the Birdie in both hardcover and full-length e-book on October 20, 2009, all of the stories from the collection, including the two previously released shorts, will be simultaneously available as single-story e-books for $1.99 each.
Bantam Dell Publisher and Editor in Chief Nita Taublib and editor Kerri Buckley put the collection together, often comparing and contrasting many annotated drafts of individual stories provided to them by the Vonnegut Estate. The finished result, per Kerri Buckley, is “incredibly unique in tone; both cautionary and hopeful.” Nita Taublib adds, “Considered independently, these are fourteen exceptionally intricate short pieces by an author whose voice we miss immensely. Taken together, they give the reader a clear sense of Kurt Vonnegut’s development into one of the most beloved and original American writers of all time.”
“The nature of e-reading and portable devices lends itself naturally to shorter content, especially short stories,” commented Ken Wohlrob, Director, Digital Content and Interactive Media for the Random House Publishing Group. “This is the perfect opportunity for us to reintroduce Kurt Vonnegut’s amazing storytelling craft to new readers, as well as longstanding fans of his, and to demonstrate the appeal of short stories in the age of e-reading.”
Look at the Birdie and the single-story e-books are part of a larger publishing program for Delacorte that will include the reissuing of fifteen classic Vonnegut backlist titles in packages featuring artwork created by the author himself.
The Random House Publishing Group is part of Random House, Inc., the U.S. book publishing division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the world’s foremost media companies.
