October 2, 2014
Literary startup Pigeonhole will offer a serial publishing model
by Claire Kelley
A new literary startup called The Pigeonhole is hoping to build a following of readers who are interested in a shared reading experience delivered in serial installments. With a planned launch for October 6th, the founders—some of whom have experience at traditional publishers like Random House and Bloomsbury in the UK—are hoping to offer what they see as a need for a new publishing model for the “future of reading.” Pigeonhole employee Erica Jarnes shared her frustration with legacy publishing in a write-up about Pigeonhole in The Bookseller:
The reason I left publishing two years ago was that I was a bit tired of it—the way we as publishers were communicating with readers seemed patronising to me, and we’d been doing things in a similar way for so long. It’s been so freeing to be able to say, “We’re trying something new; we won’t know what works immediately.”
We wanted to deliver this content to people gently. The dispatches aren’t end-in-themselves, but rather catalysts for further conversation. In releasing them weekly we hoped it would give people time to digest and mull over the topics. We hope people will stage dinner parties and salons around some of the questions our Seekers are exploring… So often, we get the output and finished product of thought—rather than the delicious angst and vulnerability that goes into someone’s thinking process.
Claire Kelley is the Director of Library and Academic Marketing at Melville House.