Following an earlier post about self-publishing, I’d now like to direct your attention to the news that John Edgar Wideman* has opted to release his next book, a collection titled Briefs, via Lulu. Consider me curious as to how it works out. I’m inherently skeptical of retail exclusives, and Lulu is — as far as I can tell — an entirely closed system; your local bookstore can’t get a copy of anything they publish, but neither can Amazon. Wideman cites the benefits of having “more control over whom I reach,” which is understandable, though Lulu’s situation would seem to limit the ways in which people can be reached. (Assumably, it’s more of a choice of limitations than anything else.)

That said, given that Lulu’s page for Mr. Wideman features news of two appearances to promote Briefs, one wonders whether there will actually be, you know, copies of Briefs for sale there. Alternately: will the end result of this find more authors of literary fiction gravitating towards Lulu, or Lulu ultimately behaving more and more like a traditional press, at least for a tier of more established authors?

*-pieces of his earlier Philadelphia Fire are still rattling around inside my head after reading it a dozen years ago, for what it’s worth.