Digital formats have given books a new home and Amazon is using it to give old books a new lease on life.
Amazon today announced Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust Rediscoveries series. The program will take a line of Pearl’s favorite out-of-print books and republish them in physical print editions, audiobook form and as eBooks in the Kindle store.
Nancy Pearl, a famous librarian, wrote a best-selling book titled “Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason.” The book contained approximately 1800 book recommendations. Unfortunately, a large portion of the books that Pearl recommended were out of print or hard to find. She received letters from readers asking where to find these books which led her to the idea of partnering with Amazon for this new venture.
The Book Lust Rediscoveries series will publish six books a year. It will allow a whole new generation of readers to discover classic books that were so hard to find before.
Pearl is a celebrity among librarians and book lovers across the country. She may also be the only librarian to have an action figure made in her likeness. She is known around the country for her intimate knowledge on books thanks to her television and book club programs.
“I’m thrilled that Book Lust Rediscoveries makes it possible to republish many of my all-time favorite novels, all of which have long been out of print,” Nancy Pearl said. “Helping these wonderful books find new readers is, for me, a joy and a delight. I was blown away by Amazon Publishing’s enthusiasm for the project and the extent to which they really understood what I wanted to do.”
The first two books to be published in the series are “A Gay and Melancholy Sound” by Merle Miller and “After Life” by Rhian Ellis.
Pearl is donating a portion of the proceeds from the sales to her foundation at the Nancy Pearl Endowment for Public Librarianship at the University of Washington’s Information School.
“A Gay and Melancholy Sound” is scheduled to be published on April 3 this year and “After Life” is set to release on June 5.
Both books will be published by AmazonEncore, a subsidiary of Amazon Publishing.