If all goes as planned, the book will be published digitally, and it will allow each reader to create a personal version of the text, based on his or her interest in reading digitized excerpts of the unpublished messages and other source material.
The librarian hopes to let people print hardbound copies of the book, each of them customized and unique. “The notion of the final fixed copy is giving way,” he says. “Texts are always in flux.”
I can see how this would work for certain types of non-fiction texts, but it got me wondering if there might be fiction applications, too. Obviously in a bricks-and-mortar bookstore, there would have to be a "standard" version of a novel. But what if when you purchased online, you could choose between the happy ending and the tragic ending? The PG version or the R or even X-rated version? Abridged or unabridged? Maybe you just want the first three chapters, to see if you're going to like it.
I realize that abridged versions and changed endings aren't new to the publishing industry, but in the past, one hasn't always gotten a choice of which version to buy. Someone has to decide, for example that they'll print a certain number of copies of A Clockwork Orange with one ending, and a certain number of copies with the other ending. Someone is making decisions about what they think will sell, and if they guess wrong either they or the reader will be unhappy. But in a POD format with the reader deciding what they want, there is no risk to the publisher that they'll get stuck with a warehouse full of unwanted pulp.
I hope to keep an eye on how this customization works in actual practice. It might be fun to write a story that the reader can adapt to his or her personal tastes.
