The hold up is the dead-tree part of the process.

One can write something convert it to a PDF and
a) post it online to download for free or via a pay mechanism
b) post it to an on-demand publisher (like lulu) for download or paper copy

Then it is available for readers to access immediately (or at most a week or two). That's why sites like this work and political books are rapidly becoming pointless.

Most of what gets published in the political sphere is what I call BSO's (book shaped objects) anyway and are hardly worth reading. Most of them tell you what the author's thesis is in the subtitle on the cover...

Clearly, the Vast Liberal Media Conspiracy™ conspired to prevent Hewitt's book from finding a publisher.

What Feinman said. Through Lulu a book can now be in print and in the stores about three weeks after the final edit. You could probably save a week of that if you had your own printshop and software and didn't go through Lulu. If the author was well known, advance work could put together a friendly distribution network before the book was even started.

Yes yes, you make good, mature points, but you're wrong on one thing. It's not just sort of funny, it's funny as shit. Kuttner's book is a well-thought-out hypothetical case. Hewitt's is a piece of self-indulgent triumphalist crap. I assume. Correctly. It's a beautiful, Ozymandianesque symbol for the current phase of the GOP

Maybe Hewitt meant "How Sarah Palin Won the Election for Obama"? Of course, that would mean he had some kind of grip on reality.

John Emerson,

Isn't that what Regnery is all about -- Converting the latest screed into a BSO (thanks, Mr. Feinman) and "distributing" t through bulk-buyers?

I suspect that a huge part of the process (unless Mr Kuttner is the fastest writer in the universe, or the book is very, very short) is that he had a lot of relevant prior writing to throw into it. And sure, that's a fair thing to do, but it isn't a sustainable model. You maybe get to do it once or twice a decade, when the zeitgeist and your research interests strongly intersect.

…Obama ….would have the opportunity to inhabit a transformational presidency….Ezra Klein 11:23 AM |

The odds of it actually being a transformational presidency however, are great considering his appalling performances
…Of the two performances, Obama's was the more appalling since he is meant to be the candidate of change and new ideas. He has no detectable commitment to change and no new ideas

Still, he does send a tingle up the legs of fauxgressives.

The holdup isn't even the dead-tree part of the process. It's just that no one typically bothers with getting a book out quickly. Usually it's about hitting the fall or spring sales catalog. (And even back in the 60s people regularly got book-length objects written and into bookstores within a week.)

And many or most magazines have calendars that are way longer -- the typical monthly knows what it's doing anywhere from 3 to 9 months out...

Indeed, Stumpy Joe; it's not "sort of funny."

It's hysterical!

The title is a source of delight that will keep me warm through many a winter!

Hewitt is a master. I stand in awe.

As an editor and project manager for both print and online books, I can confirm that Kuttner's achievement, while impressive, was not one-off. Anyone knowledgeable about their subject matter and willing to put the effort into writing to a tight schedule can go from MS to PDF in a matter of a couple months. Much of the time and expense associated with the traditional publishing process is tied to the demands of producing a printed product. Freed from that necessity, the process can be accelerated greatly with no loss in quality.

Not unlike the book that promised to chronicle the Patriots 19-0 NFL season that got spoiled by a measly little bit of reality in the Super Bowl.

Does Hugh Hewitt's breath smell of shit from all the arselicking he does?

I mean, really: there's toadying, and there's Hewitting.

Ah, Mike -- I see you're a stooge for everyone's favorite long discredited, upper-class Stalinist Alexander Cockburn.

Now, now . . . is that really how you want to go through life? Too dumb to see how an African-American president (with a name like Obama's no less) who's for universal health care and was against the Iraq War from day one is, indeed, a monumental event for America?

Are you really that oblivious?

That stupid?

The Cockburn family, of course, has been an embarrassment to the left for generations. Liars for Stalin. Sneerers at the environmental movement. Apologists for all sorts of thugs, misogynists and brutal regimes.

Though -- I'll grant you this -- Alexander's writing for ritzy yuppie travel magazines and his memoir of visiting his daughter at her (and formerly his) all-white prepschool were inadvertent comedy classics! (Not unlike Hewitt's title come to think of it!)

Grow up, Mike. Obama in the oval office would be very big news, indeed.

You don't have to go to your grave a gullible rube.

The comments about this over at Wonkette are funnier!

I was relatively unfamiliar with Kuttner before a few days ago, when I listened to him decimate someone from the Hoover Institution on this (excellent) radio program.

Highly recommended and podcastable.

Just hand out advertising fliers for Hewett's book to moviegoers on their way to see"An American Carol." Runaway best-sellerdom is assurred.

The paperback publishers have long been able to pull a quick "instant" publication. Goes back to at least the Warren report and the Pentagon papers.