13 janeiro 2004

CULTURAS IN VITRO

Title fight: Those three or four words on the cover can make all the difference to a book's chances of success
$10,000 book club: MIT professor Michael Hawley set a new Guinness World Record for largest book with the publication of Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom, a 114-page photographic picture book recording four of his visits to the tiny country.
Opening to 1.5 by 2 metres and weighing more than 60 kilograms, the book is so big it needs its own Sherpa. The price? A cool $10,000 (U.S.), 17 times what the average Bhutanese earns in a year, although the books only cost $1,000 each to produce, with the remaining $9,000 benefiting the Bhutanese ministry of education as a charitable donation.