Portal de la novela.L ondres, Inglaterra. Thu Sep 7, 11:18 AM ET. (Jeffrey Goldfarb / Reuters).- Penguin is turning to publishing's past to help usher the industry into the modern era, releasing a novel in serial form to create a buzz online before the complete work is released next year.
Gordon Dahlquist's fantastical gothic mystery "Glass Books of the Dream Eaters" will be sent to buyers in the mail in 10 weekly paperback installments, each with a cliff-hanger ending, before publication of the full hardcover in January.
Only 5,000 editions of the serial version will be sold for 25 pounds ($47.08) each with free delivery, and they must be purchased online directly from Penguin. The hardcover will retail for 16.99 pounds ($32).
Publishers have been trying to find new ways to lure readers to their fledgling online sites as consumers have grown accustomed to buying books from the likes of Amazon.com.
The heyday of the serial novel in the Victorian era saw thousands of people line up for the works of Charles Dickens, with "Great Expectations" installments outselling daily newspapers. Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins also famously drew large followings from their serials.
The marketing strategy for "Glass Books," Dahlquist's first novel, was devised by the same firm that has promoted the hit TV shows "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives" in Britain.
"We wanted to take this idea of water-cooler TV and apply it to books just as it used to be with (Dickens') 'The Old Curiosity Shop' when people would rush to read the next installment," said Amelia Fairney, publicity director for Penguin imprint Viking.
"Publishing is routinely behind in terms of using the Internet," she said. "We have to start using it the same way the music and film industries have. We're just moving with the times really."
Horror novelist Stephen King has experimented with the serial form. He sold "The Plant" in sections directly on his Web site in 2000, requiring sufficient voluntary reader payments for each edition to keep writing.
His "Green Mile" also was sold serially in stores in 1996 as six paperbacks before later being published as a single volume.
Penguin is hoping fans will discuss the book online after reading each installment and delve into the elaborate mythology surrounding the characters in a devoted online space, www.glassbooks.co.uk.
Fairney said the serial version would not make any profit for Penguin, which is owned by Pearson Plc, and was being considered as a marketing tool for the hardcover.
She declined to disclose the cost, but given the sale price, if all 5,000 copies sell, it would mean the price tag of the effort would be at least 125,000 pounds ($235,400).
The 768-page novel was released recently in the United States to mixed reviews.
"At its heart, 'The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters' is less a novel than it is hundreds of pages of ornament piled on a rickety piece of storytelling," according to a review in the Washington Post.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer critic was more impressed: "The dialogue is wry, the descriptions clever and the complicated plot advances as smoothly as a patrician's pocket watch."
