In Age of Shortness, Why Shouldn’t Fiction Be Sold by the Piece?
Print Defender Matt Weiland Keeps 50 States in One Book

by Leon Neyfakh writing in The New York Observer September 2, 2008

Later this month, Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey will publish a book called State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America (Ecco), a collection of 50 essays, each one between 3,000 and 5,000 words long: Jhumpa Lahiri wrote about Rhode Island, William Vollman wrote about California, Jonathan Franzen wrote about New York, and so forth.

The book is nearly 600 pages altogether, and carries a list price of $29.95. These are big numbers, if you’re really just curious to read what Dave Eggers has to say about Illinois and the rest of it not so much.

Would Mr. Weiland consider selling each of the essays separately? Maybe over the Internet? No, he wouldn’t!
“I think one of the pleasures of doing this kind of work is that you’re making something larger than the sum of its parts,” Mr. Weiland said in a phone interview last week, speaking from his office at The Paris Review, where he is deputy editor. “Part of the thing about being an editor and a publisher is … that you’re making selections, you’re curating. We do it because we think all the stuff we selected is really good and worth reading. To go with some a la carte model seems to sap some of the wonder and the curiosity and the strangeness of good publishing out of it.”
As for the Internet: “I’m a print guy,” Mr. Weiland said. “I will be fighting the lonely fight. I will be down there with the ink at the printing presses with the last foreman in the Western Hemisphere.”

Great stuff, read the rest at The New York Observer online.