30 November, 2006

Bonuses for Bibliophiles

Most of us are by now familiar with the bonus material on DVDs. In addition to the movie, we get scenes deleted from theatrical cut, commentary tracks, making-of featurettes, interviews, etc. Well, I discovered the other night that some books now have bonus features.

I noticed this when I was thumbing though As Nature Made Him. There's a little "P.S." in the lower right-hand corner of the cover indicating that there's "Insights, Interviews & More" to be had. For the book at hand, this means that readers get an interview with the author, John Colapinto, an interview with the subject of the book, David Reimer, as well as an excerpt from Colapinto's novel, About the Author. I also noticed extras in Matt Ridley's The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture. Unfortunately, I discovered that this was merely his previous book, Nature Via Nurture, which I already own, retitled. Why the reprint demanded a new title is beyond me. So caveat emptor. The P.S. bonuses are only on certain trade paperbacks published by Harper Perennial.

Now that I look it up on the Internets, I find the press release.

It could be really interesting, especially for fiction, if they ever included material that was edited out for publication. I mean, we readers want our deleted scenes too. Throw in something that fell prey to the chopping block and then have a bit which explains why.

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