Summer Book Serials Are Back at 'NY Times'

By: Joe Strupp As Bill Clinton's "My Life" and Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" compete for book readers this summer, they may face some unlikely competition from classics such as F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" and Truman Capote's "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

No, Capote and Fitzgerald probably won't show up on the bestsellers list in the coming months. But, thanks to The New York Times (Click for QuikCap), newspaper readers will be able to peruse those classic novels, as well as "Like Water for Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel and "The Color of Water" by James McBride -- all for the price of a daily paper.

Launching "The Great Summer Read," the Times will serialize those four books in their entirety over a four-week period beginning July 12. Each book will run consecutively in seven, 16-page tabloid-style installments starting on Monday of each week and culminating on Sunday.

"What better way to bring our diverse city together than by offering readers the opportunity to 'gather' around a great book," said Alyse Myers, Times vice president of marketing services. "As a newspaper, we are a natural advocate for fostering literacy and a passion for reading. To advance these causes, we decided to revive the old tradition of serializing books and to offer them free, with the daily newspaper -- for the whole city to enjoy."

NYTimes.com will post the first chapter of each book online and will host online discussion groups for readers to share their thoughts on the books with other Times readers. Each forum will go live on the day the first excerpt is published in the newspaper.

The serialized versions will be available to all New York area Times readers, which include 577,000 daily and 795,000 on Sunday, a Times spokeswoman said. She declined to say how much the project would cost.

Local BMW Dealers have signed on to be the exclusive sponsor of the program, but the paper would not reveal their investment in the project.

The scheduled serialization will begin with "The Great Gatsby" on July 12, "Like Water for Chocolate" on July 26; "Breakfast at Tiffany's" Aug. 9; and "The Color of Water" Aug. 23.

To promote the project, the Times will launch a series of newspaper, television and radio advertisements to run throughout the summer.

The paper also is supporting each publication by arranging celebrity readings and panel discussions at Borders and The Brooklyn Public Library.