For Bookstores, a Real Page-Turner

Audio books as either physical CDs or in digital form.

Large-print paperbacks that would be printed on demand.

Print editions would be shipped to bookstores as usual. The other formats would be available for purchase through a small selection of bookstores nationwide -- eight independents plus a number of Borders outlets, including stores in Rockville and downtown Washington -- that had volunteered to be part of the Caravan experiment. Ingram signed on to fulfill these orders.

It seemed like a natural fit, Freeman says, because his company had many of the necessary pieces already in place, including relationships with bookstores and print-on-demand capability, "and we were moving into the digital space." Right now he's trying to demonstrate to the booksellers the nitty-gritty of how Caravan will work. A camera from C-SPAN's "Book TV" zooms in on his computer monitor.

"Just one moment, I'm not rolling," the cameraman says.

"Can we interrupt for a second," Freeman says a couple of minutes later. "I lost my connection."

Connection restored, he explains that the process of ordering digital material will add a layer of complication for booksellers. They'll need to "capture some information from the customer" so that, once paid for at the store, an e-book or the digital audio version can be zapped directly to that customer's e-mail address.

Up comes an e-book on the screen. It's "In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism," from the University of North Carolina Press. The pages look just like those in the print edition. But the digital version will be searchable, among other advantages -- and if the buyer so chooses, he or she will be able to order a single chapter instead of the whole book.

"I think that I need to be walked through like maybe an entire transaction," says Rebecca Kirk.

Kirk is the lucky bookseller who's been asked to figure out this Caravan thing and communicate it to the rest of the staff -- though at the project's current scale, she'll probably handle most transactions herself. This spring, Caravan is offering just 23 books.

The big problem, as everyone involved acknowledges, won't be figuring out the mechanics of Caravan. It'll be letting customers know it exists.

But hey: We're talking demonstration project here. "It's a relatively small group of books," Osnos says, "but a very big idea."