The book is being sold in 10 instalments, which will be sent out weekly. This tactic harks back to Victorian times, where novelists such as Charles Dickens used to write books chapter by chapter often leaving readers on a cliffhanger so that they would eagerly await the next instalment. The books are also bound to look like Victorian serials.
Unlike with Dickens' serials, readers will not be able to buy them in shops -- they are available exclusively via a special , and only 5,000 editions will be sold in the serial format. A subscription for all 10 issues costs £25.
Penguin is publicising the serial online, on its and via a competition at the Glassbooks website. It is the first time that Penguin has offered a book for sale solely on its own website.
Visitors to the Penguin blog have left mixed comments on the news of the serialisation. Some are enthused at the novel way of delivering the novel, but others have complained that it is pointless because the book has already been published in the US.
'The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters' is written by an author going by the name of GW Dahlquist. Penguin's publicity blurb on him says he is the sole remaining practitioner of mesmerism, "the scientifically discredited theory of animal magnetism" and that he travels the world from his ranch in California to visit his clients.
However, the website of Random House, which published the book in the US, reveals that GW Dahlquist is actually Gordon Dahlquist, a dramatist and director who lives in New York and who has written and directed plays and experimental films.
The novel starts off with a woman named Miss Temple trying to find out why her fiance has suddenly broken off their engagement, and is set in a fictitious Victorian city.
'The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters' will be published in one volume in January.
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