People may say the album is dead, but the nostalgia for it certainly is not. If you plug the term "favorite album" into Google, you'll get back nearly 800,000 hits—a testament to how much people love discussing, listing and dissecting the form. David Barker, editorial director at Continuum Books, knows this firsthand, and his book series, 331/3, is reaping the benefits.
The name, which refers to the speed at which vinyl albums play, encapsulates what the series is: an ode to the rock album as a work of art and an occasionally life-altering force. Barker, who said he thought he could fill a niche with short books about single albums—an alternative to the glut of "straightforward band histories"—started the line in 2003; it currenty has titles signed through 2009. Highlighted in PW's October 2006 story about successful series, 331/3 has far exceeded expectations.
The books, at a 4¾"× 6½" trim and an average of 145 pages, are done in an economy of scale model. Print runs are usually 5,000 copies, and writers were initially music journalists and friends of friends of Barker. That, however, has changed.
In April 2005 Barker started a blog dedicated to the series, 33third.blogspot.com. Recently, after posting an open call for pitches—writers were asked for 1,000 words on what their favorite album is and why—Barker and his staff were overwhelmed with the response. Expecting no more than 50 pitches, Barker and his staff now have to whittle down the 451 they received to 20 or 25.
Barker thinks fans have responded most to the line's creative approach to its subject matter. While he estimated that roughly 60% of the books are journalistic takes on an album itself and its importance in the rock canon, others are more off-center and can take the form of fiction or memoir. The most successful book in the line, Meet Is Murder (a slightly obscure Smiths album), is a novella about a Boston teen in the '80s. "People love the unpredictability of the series," Barker explained.
So passionate are some of 331/3's fans that a June title on Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love (which features the hit "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic) is proving a hard sell for Continuum reps. 331/3 readers—whose indie-leaning taste skews far from the Celine Dions of the world—are angered that ink would be given to an artist with such wide commercial appeal, but Barker hopes they will be swayed by the volume's theme: the slippery, and occasionally divisive, nature of musical taste.
Celine Dion aside, it certainly seems like 331/3 will go on.
