Caravan Co-op Available to Promote Fall List

The Caravan Project has announced a new co-op initiative to help its bookstore partners market the innovative program, which offers consumers the option of purchasing select nonfiction titles in a choice of formats. Caravan is making $1,000 available to each of its bookstore partners who agree to market the multi-platform title offerings from Caravan publishers in newsletters and other promotions.

"We're working with a group of booksellers to encourage people to use The Caravan Project," Peter Osnos, the founder and editor-at-large of PublicAffairs Books, told BTW. He noted that the co-op initiative was launched, in part, to encourage booksellers to inform their customers about the program as it gets set to debut its fall list. "The only way to really fulfill the potential of Caravan is to have the retailer be a part of the process," he said.

Caravan, which is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, numbers among its supporters the American Booksellers Association and the Association of American University Presses (AAUP).

"Our goal in working with ABA, AAUP, and publishers is to create a way ... to do digital delivery and find affordable ways to do audio," said Osnos. Caravan is working with Ingram Book Company and Ingram Digital to make the system "increasingly functional," he explained.

Caravan's inaugural spring list featured 23 titles in simultaneous print, print-on-demand, e-book, chapter e-book, and digital audio editions. It included titles from Beacon Press, Council on Foreign Relations Press, Island Press, The New Press, University of California Press, University of North Carolina Press, and Yale University Press

For its fall list, Caravan will have 45 titles available from an expanded list of publishers, including Columbia University Press, Harvard University Press, Kent State Press, University of Michigan Press, and the University of Minnesota Press. Books will be available in formats, such as Adobe, MicroSoft, downloadable audio, and large print (in addition to traditional print). However, chapter e-books will not be offered.

Booksellers who are interested in joining the Caravan program can learn more about it at www.caravanbooks.org/forsell.jsp. --David Grogan