Cable Channel Devoted Solely To Literary Topics

It was during a casual lunch conversation with his lawyer two years ago that E.L. Doctorow first came up with the idea for Booknet, a 24-hour cable television channel devoted to books.

“We were talking about the explosion of cable channels, and I said there should be a channel for informing the public about the imaginative and intellectual life of this country as it is conducted in books,” said Doctorow, whose novels include “Ragtime” and “Billy Bathgate.”

Now, after months of wrangling, meetings, starts and stops, the channel is set to go on the air next fall with author interviews, panel discussions, publishing news and readings. The channel will also offer a shopping service for highlighted books.

Burton Pines, the former chief executive of NET’s Political NewsTalk Network, is the new president of Booknet Inc. Several prominent authors, among them Margaret Atwood, Galway Kinnell, Arthur Miller and George Plimpton, serve on its advisory board.

Start-up costs for the channel are estimated at about $40 million, and while Doctorow and three Booknet co-founders have provided seed money for the project, overall financing has not been secured.