A Plantable Book and the World’s First Zero-Emission Book Tour

We’ve seen the ‘Growing Book‘ (where you can watch your plants grow as you read) and paper cards with seeds embedded in them. If you visit Gangarams in Bangalore, you can get greeting cards with seeds embedded in them too. But ever heard of a plantable book? James Kaelan’s first novel, We’re Getting On, is just that – a plantable book!

From the book’s website

Not only is his book (at least partially) reincarnatable as forest, but Kaelan is embarking on a Zero Emissions Book Tour to support it. He plans to bicycle from city to city, sleeping outdoors and eschewing all technology for the duration of the tour. Part of his mission is to prove that publishing — with all its paper (and whiskey) usage — can be a sustainable industry.
Is the physical concept related to the content for you? I knew that the book was about this sort of retreat from technology and sort of, I don’t know if ludditic is an adjective actually, but… So it seemed thematically in keeping. Not to give away the end of the title novella, but it’s sort of approaching rejuvenation or at least enlightenment through extreme deprivation. Maybe? So the idea of renewal, the idea that at the end of this book, which is sort of caustic and dystopian, you could recover from it by turning the book into a tree, seemed like a really cool idea. And then it was just a logistical nightmare to make this thing happen. Then of course the other part was to tour the book and stay in keeping with the themes. So during the tour, obviously I’m doing it by bike, but I can’t sleep inside, I’m in a tent like the characters in the title novella, and they can’t use a phone or watch TV or anything like that.

Read the entire interview here.