In the first half of the Twentieth Century, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius began publishing Little Blue Books in a small town in southeastern Kansas. These books were on a wide variety of topics and reached a massive number of readers: …in just over thirty years, [he] had become one of the most prolific publishers in U.S. history, putting an estimated 300 million copies of inexpensive “Little Blue Books” into the hands of working-class and middle-class Americans. Selling for as little as five cents and small enough to fit in a trouser pocket, these books were meant to bring culture and self-education to working people, and covered topics ranging from classic literature to home-finance to sexually pleasuring one’s spouse. Distributed discreetly by mail order, Little Blue Books disseminated birth-control information not available in small-town libraries, advocated racial justice at a time when the Ku Klux Klan influenced politics, and introduced Euripides, Shakespeare, and Emerson to people without the means for higher education.
It's not so much a "roam book" as it is an effort to bring literature to readers' expectations of text on screens -- almost Wikipedia, but with plot and catharsis.
This new wave of platforms is the first that may allow for literature to grow naturally on screens (vs the now-dominant endless scroll) -- I am exploring these possibilities.
Happy to find your newsletter and look forward to following along!
Hi Samuel, a friend forwarded this to me re: Roam as a publishing platform. I'm using roam to publish a novel-in-graph: https://roamresearch.com/#/app/Heterotopic_Content/page/Vn0of_Vtz
It's not so much a "roam book" as it is an effort to bring literature to readers' expectations of text on screens -- almost Wikipedia, but with plot and catharsis.
Also just launching a multi-player experiment (https://www.dikaiopolis2.com/notes/eternal-roaman-literature) which is trying to transpose the acts of a timeline (eg Twitter, FB) into a collaborative storytelling experience.
This new wave of platforms is the first that may allow for literature to grow naturally on screens (vs the now-dominant endless scroll) -- I am exploring these possibilities.
Happy to find your newsletter and look forward to following along!
Best,
Dickey