Trafford, a print-on-demand company in the U.K., has made a genius publicity move... and a pretty interesting human move, to boot. They're earmarking over a million dollars/pounds worth of publishing for the sole purpose of cataloguing indigenous languages on the brink of extinction.
This is a genius move for a P-O-D company to take. For one, they've chosen an esoteric subject, one that will by necessity gain them respect in academic communities -- they'll be cornering the publication market on hundreds of languages.
Secondly, they're doing it all for the sake of education. Children and schools are meant to be the recipients of the published materials. This adds additional legitimacy to their enterprise.
Thirdly, they'll get a fair share of press out of this endeavor.
Fourthly (Is "fourthly" a word? It feels wrong.), they're setting an example for using P-O-D in a reasonable way -- to publish a niche subject with limited initial interest. If a book on the Khwedam language of Namibia somehow becomes popular and mainstream, that's great -- P-O-D can handle it. If not, no harm done. The book will exist forever in a digital format; the language is preserved (at least on paper) for future generations.
Mission accomplished. And a pretty cool one at that. Kudos.
Keith Donahue's The Stolen Child seems to be doing everything right. He's got a blog on Amazon... Amazon sent galleys to their top 100 reviewers... and NPR covered the unique new approach.