AlterNet Books Launches with Dick Cheney Satire

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 3/31/2008 2:17:00 PM

AlterNet.org, the daily online magazine and information portal that features exclusive content as well as news stories from alternative newsweeklies, magazines and web publications, has started a book publishing arm. Executive editor Don Hazen characterized the program as “opportunistic quick publishing” that will focus on publishing “kickass kind of books that wake you up or make you mad.” AlterNet Books’s first title pubs today: Young Dick Cheney: Great American, a political satire by Bruce Kluger and David Slavin, with illustrations by Tim Foley. 

Hazen, who has been at AlterNet for 14 years, began exploring the idea of publishing books last year, when one of the site’s editors suggested it could be profitable, considering the size of AlterNet’s audience—Hazen said it draws more than three million readers a month. The books, which are all trade paperbacks, are distributed by PGW, and Young Dick Cheney ($12.95) is the first of five titles that will release between now and mid-September. Other titles include Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio: America’s Ten Worst Hate Talkers and the Progressive Alternatives by AlterNet columnist Rory O’Connor; Water Consciousness: Everything You Need to Know to Protect the World’s Most Precious Resource by AlterNet’s environmental editor, Tara Lohan; Count My Vote by AlterNet’s specialist on elections on democracy, Steve Rosenfeld; and an as yet untitled book about a new approach to reforming immigration by AlterNet’s Joshua Holland.

Hazen, who has edited books but never worked at a publishing house, said he wants to publish books that respond to current events on a shortened schedule. “We’re not easing ourselves into the nine-month-plus process.” The first printing for Young Dick Cheney is 5,000 copies. The company will publish works by authors who write for AlterNet, or are on its staff, or “just have great ideas that we think we can turn around and market successfully,” said Hazen. In the case of Young Dick Cheney, coauthor Bruce Kluger pitched the idea to AlterNet after hearing the site was going to start a book division. For now, there are no full-time employees devoted solely to AlterNet Books; freelancers and members of the “AlterNet family” are handling editing, design and production. Its books are for sale through all PGW’s usual channels, as well as on AlterNet.org.