chapbooks and broadsides

From today's PW Daily:

Hoping to prove good things come in small packages, Random House is rushing a
stand alone edition of Maya Angelou's recently-delivered original poem Amazing
Peace. The poem, which was written (and read by the author) for the December 1
Christmas Tree lighting at the White House, will be packaged in a hardcover
edition by the publisher. Retailing for $9.95, the book, which will be a slight
30 pages and trimmed at approximately 5"x7", Random hopes Amazing will perform as well as the last stand-alone edition the company did for an Angelou poem: in
1993 Random had a bestseller with a 32-page edition of On the Pulse of Morning,
which Angelou read at the Clinton inauguration. That Angelou will be appearing
on The Oprah Winfrey Show this Friday (December 9) certainly bodes well for
sales…and justifies the sizeable 230,000 print run. Can you say stocking
stuffer?

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Goldmine for sure.

This made me think about broadsides (not sure why) but I wonder if they would be profitable today? I think about Dudley Randall's and his launching of a press based on broadsides and wonder if the format could work today? Probably not because they would have to battle with technology, but I always thought the idea was so cool.