Digital publishing has given new meaning to the term “instant books.” As the Wall Street Journal reports, some publishers are planning to release e-books about Osama Bin Laden.

Random House is publishing an e-book collection of essays by various authors next week,  Beyond Bin Laden: America and the Future of Terror.

The Free Press is releasing an e-book based on Peter Bergen’s The Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and Al-Qaeda, which came out in January. (The Free Press is an imprint of Simon & Schuster, which doesn’t make e-book editions available for library lending).

In print, St. Martin’s Press is in the fortunate position of already having a book in the pipeline, SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper by Howard E. Wasdin, a former member of the group credited with killing bin Laden. Originally scheduled for May 24, it is being rushed in to print and is now expected to arrive the middle of next week. Hollywood has also come knocking; according to the Hollywood Reporter, the book’s agent has been fielding calls from studios interested in film rights.

In the NYT “Arts Beat” blog, Michiko Kakutani provides a useful roundup of eight earlier titles, many of which overlap with a separate list on the Huffington Post.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011 at 8:59 am and is filed under Politics and Current Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.