Digital taking on pace

eBooks and apps are being launched in tandem with printed books

And important books are being launched as stand-alone eBooks

Publishers are covering their bets -- or so it seems from a quick scan of the deals described in this week's Publishers Lunch "Lunch Weekly."

For instance:


Tim Ferriss, #1 NYT Bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body has sold a manuscript called THE 4-HOUR CHEF, which will make the secrets of the culinary arts and nutrition accessible to all via his life-hacking style and teaching readers to cook (and much more) while they gain practical applications of Ferriss's The Slow-Carb Diet -- to none other than Larry Kirshbaum at Amazon Publishing. Unsurprisingly, perhaps,  an enhanced ebook will be launched globally alongside the hardcover.

Composer Philip Glass has sold his memoir to Robert Weil at Liveright.  What promises to be an engaging story of his youth and what influenced his music, including work at his father's record store in Baltimore, and collaborating with Ravi Shankar and Allen Ginsbert, will be published with an app containing original Glass music.

FOX News Channel's digital-only enhanced ebook RISE OF FREEDOM: The New World Trade Center, providing an overview of the rebuilding effort that has taken place at Ground Zero over the last 10 years, exploring all aspects of the new World Trade Center site, including building details, the construction process and timeline, and the individuals and organizations that made the rebuilding effort possible, with 85 photos, original animation, and an introduction and 15 videos by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith reporting from Ground Zero, has been sold to Ana Maria Allessi at Harper, for publication on August 23, 2011.