Literary Ventures Fund

In America, reports Alex Beam in The Boston Globe, venture capital has come to publishing.

Here's the idea. [Jim] Bildner wants to apply venture capital rules to book publishing. LVF will make small investments, and thus own portions of, promising novels, nonfiction works, and even book series. It's the spread-your-bets-and-hope-for-a-hit VC model. If one out of 10 investments pays off big, you get rich. In this case, the LVF [Literary Ventures Fund] gets rich, as any gains will be plowed back into the nonprofit for reinvestment in future projects.