After 130 years or so of paper galleys, Publishers Weekly's Forecasts department has gone digital, reviewing an upcoming nonfiction title using a digital reader to review an electronic galley.
The first title to be reviewed at PW using an e-galley is McGraw-Hill's Brother Astronomer: Adventures of a Vatican Scientist by Brother Guy Consolmagno (Mar.), the first in a new series of science trade books developed by M-H trade science editor Amy Murphy (News, Sept. 1). The e-galley was read on a Rocket eBook, a portable digital reading device produced by NuvoMedia and supplied to PW for this experiment.
Philip Ruppel, v-p and group publisher at McGraw-Hill, called the experiment "a natural extension of using Rocket eBook technology to enhance the publishing process. The e-galley can be made available more efficiently and earlier than print galleys." Martin F. Eberhard, cofounder and CEO of NuvoMedia, said the experiment would "extend the advantages of reading an e-book to the reviewer community."
Nora Rawlinson, editor-in-chief of PW, said that it makes sense to use digital galleys. "We use e-mail to set up a lot of complicated maneuverings of paper galleys, so why not go completely digital? Now we can press a button and the galley is available." Rawlinson also noted that with the time window between manuscript submission and finished book shrinking quickly, "we've got to look for ways to either extend that window or keep pace with it."
Dropping PW's usual cloak of reviewer anonymity, Jeff Zaleski, PW nonfiction editor, is now PW's first digital reviewer. He praised the convenience and the experience of reading on the Rocket eBook. (Zaleski offers his thoughts on e-galleys in a note in this week's forecasts section; see p. 48). "You don't have to carry around huge galleys," he said. "And the device already has reference books and dictionaries installed." And while he did complain that using the device's notes-writing tool was "slow" (he speculated that future readers might record vocal notes), he added that digital galleys were very likely "the future of book reviewing. It was fun and cool." For more info on e-galleys, e-mail bookreviews@ rocket-ebook.com.
