AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The redacted version of the Mueller report is now available to read online - all 448 pages.
MARK GOMPERTZ: Good luck to you if that's what you want to do.
CHANG: Mark Gompertz is with Skyhorse Publishing, one of a few publishing houses planning to issue the report the old-fashioned way.
GOMPERTZ: People really just prefer reading it in a book.
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Gompertz and his team are scrambling to get the book in stores by next Friday. He says Skyhorse isn't simply taking what the government issues and putting it on paper.
GOMPERTZ: We have our typesetters sitting here doing it and a proper typographical way. That's a lot easier for people to read when it's set nicely. We have a team of nine people that will be proofreading throughout the day and night if that's what it takes.
CHANG: And there will be a foreword by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a Trump supporter who has been critical of the Mueller investigation.
CORNISH: Over at Scribner, extra content will be added to their version of the Mueller report.
COLIN HARRISON: We have included a list of the primary characters in this national and international drama. We have a timeline. We also have a set of important Justice Department filings.
CORNISH: Editor Colin Harrison says Scribner is partnering with The Washington Post.
HARRISON: We thought we could provide not just the Mueller report but a lot of useful and valuable context around it so that it would be all the more useful to readers.
CHANG: Melville House is taking the opposite route - no extras, no frills.
DENNIS JOHNSON: Absolutely not. We will not be editing it in any way. We will be presenting it exactly as the Department of Justice has released it.
CORNISH: That's publisher Dennis Johnson.
JOHNSON: It's our belief that, you know, we should respect the reader and give them the report and nothing but the report.
CHANG: But if you want to read it online, Johnson says that's fine too.
JOHNSON: I hope a lot of people read it online. That would be great. The more people that read it the better. But the fact of the matter is not everybody has access to a computer. And reading it online may not be the ideal way to read it.
CORNISH: Dennis Johnson says even verbatim copies of government publications hold a special place for people. And he points to an example from his own life.
JOHNSON: I still have the copy of the Pentagon Papers that my parents bought for our home library thinking that was just an important historic document. And I'd like to think that this one is up there with that in importance.
CHANG: History would suggest that Dennis Johnson and the other publishers are onto something. From the Warren Commission report on President John F. Kennedy's assassination to the Starr report on President Bill Clinton's affair with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, some government documents find a big audience.
CORNISH: The report by the 9/11 Commission was a bestseller and even named a finalist for the National Book Award. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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