Tired of the network sound bites, C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb created “Booknotes,” weekly, hourlong author interviews. From that, comes an anthology of the chats, in which the writers talk, and talk, and talk.

Once again, Brian Lamb has bucked the tide.

It wasn’t enough for him to celebrate the publication of his first book with a national tour or a private party for friends. That would have been too predictable, too mainstream.

Instead, the founder of C-SPAN and the author of “Booknotes” (Times Books) drove to the printing plant in Virginia where his title was rushing off the presses, and he watched in awe--like a little kid at his first baseball game.

“A friend of mine told someone she was going out there with me,” Lamb says, chuckling in his office near Capitol Hill. “And he said: ‘Wow, that’s interesting. Why don’t you just pull over to the side of the road and watch the grass grow?’ ”

Or watch C-SPAN. Lamb has heard all the jokes and wryly shrugs them off. But he’s serious about the importance of books and was proud to witness the assembly-line baptism of his own.

“It was amazing to see them printed, and the guy at the plant said that in 13 years, I was the first writer to do this,” Lamb adds. “So I guess I did something different.”

Doing things differently has become a trademark for Lamb, 55, whose new book offers highlights from eight years of “Booknotes,” the weekly, hourlong TV interviews he has conducted with some of America’s most outstanding authors of nonfiction.

While the book focuses on the mechanics of writing, the 119 authors interviewed--ranging from Doris Kearns Goodwin and Shelby Foote to former President Nixon and House Speaker Newt Gingrich--offer glimpses of the worlds they have chronicled, and of their inner lives as writers.

Informative and fast-paced, “Booknotes” is unlike any other nonfiction anthology on the market. But the Sunday night show it honors is even more unique. Long before Oprah discovered reading and the mass market for books, Lamb was serving up a special kind of journalism that let writers talk--and talk, and talk--with little or no interruption.

The goal, he says, has been to offer an alternative to the fleeting encounters that pass for literary interviews on commercial television. Instead of the typical network spiel--where a writer who has spent years on a biography must boil it down into several chatty comments--Lamb lets authors think out loud. He encourages them to digress, to backtrack and ultimately give viewers more than a sound bite.

In the process, he almost disappears. For millions of C-SPAN viewers, Lamb is the Man Without Emotion, the fellow who appears to have lost his ego. Yet it’s not because he’s shy.

“I’d be surprised if, on the 57 minutes of any show, I’m talking for more than five minutes,” he says. “And the danger is that people will see me as eccentric. . . . But I want [viewers] to have a TV experience that has nothing to do with me.”

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In person, Lamb is cheerful, amusing and outspoken--light-years, in other words, from the button-down persona he projects on TV. But his low-key image has built a loyal audience. Besides “Booknotes,” he has launched “About Books,” a five-hour block of weekend programming on C-SPAN2 that reports on trends, events and personalities in the book world.

Like its predecessor, “About Books” brings viewers to the unvarnished heart of a story--whether it’s a literary festival, an academic lecture or a colorful bookstore tour--with a minimum of commentary. “Booknotes” and other C-SPAN programming now reach an estimated 70 million homes, while “About Books” can be seen in 47 million.

Lamb was inspired to create “Booknotes” in 1989 when advance publicity for Neil Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie” suggested that the former New York Times journalist was about to publish a formidable history of the Vietnam War. The project took 16 years to complete, and C-SPAN’s founding CEO cringed at the thought of what Sheehan probably would encounter in network television interviews. He knew there had to be a better way.

“I wanted to give viewers a chance to really find out what was in the book, instead of watching a brief spot on the ‘Today’ show,” Lamb recalls. “And that came from years of watching interviews on TV and saying to the interviewer: ‘Shut up! Get out of the way! I don’t care what you think about the book or why you think it’s important. Stop showing off!’ ”

It’s the same philosophy that has guided C-SPAN (Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network) since Lamb began his pioneering broadcasts in 1979: He is wary of middlemen and on-air commentaries that get between viewers and a story, and because his nonprofit corporation is funded by cable TV companies, he has the luxury of doing things differently.

“We are what TV would look like if you took profit out of it,” he suggests. “We never know what our ratings are. We don’t have commercials and we don’t have bottom-line concerns.”

Chock-full of government news and political forums, C-SPAN clearly is an acquired taste. Some people are riveted by nonstop coverage of the House and Senate, and participate eagerly in daily phone-in shows. Others reach for the clicker at the first sight of yet another Washington budget hearing.

So it is with “Booknotes.” If you’re looking for a quick take on national bestsellers, surf on. But if you want to hear from a historian like Clare Brandt--who traveled the same roads and rivers as Benedict Arnold to produce a vivid portrait of America’s most famous traitor--Lamb’s show can be an unusual experience, an hour of TV filled with intelligent conversation.

During an interview in 1994, for example, Brandt said a biographer has to experience life as her subject did. She then told the story of how she braved the bitter cold of Quebec in January to better understand an incident in Arnold’s life. On network TV, that moment might have been edited out. But Lamb looked fascinated. Go on, he seemed to say. What else did you learn as a historian? And where did the writing take you?

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In recounting the program’s highlights, “Booknotes” is an entertaining read. Goodwin, author of “No Ordinary Time,” recalls her satisfaction on learning that Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt still loved each other long after Eleanor discovered his infidelity. Foote, who produced an epic history of the Civil War, tells how he wrote with an antique “dip” pen and slept for 20 years in the room where he worked.

Former President Carter sheds light on life after the White House, recounting his frustrations in selling a book of poetry to publishers who did not take him seriously. In an unforgettable anecdote, journalist Paul Hendrickson, author of “The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War,” describes how a man still embittered by the Vietnam War confronted the former Pentagon chief years later on a Martha’s Vineyard ferryboat and tried to throw him overboard.

The mood swings from despair to hilarity: When Lewis B. Puller Jr., author of the autobiography “Fortunate Son,” described his devastating war injuries in Vietnam, Lamb recalls that he nearly broke down in tears. Yet there was only laughter when John Hockenberry, a disabled journalist who wrote “Moving Violations: A Memoir,” described the time he entered his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and then hid under her bed for 10 hours while she and a new boyfriend made passionate love.

Public officials come in for scrutiny. Among them: former Sen. Bob Dole, who declared emphatically on a show in 1990 that he never again would run for the presidency. And then there’s Gingrich, who brashly graded his book “To Renew America” as “somewhere between A- and a B+,” adding: “Every indication we have in the opening couple of days is that [the book is] going to be very, very successful.”

Spoken just like a politician. Dealing with huge egos is common in publishing, and Lamb is no innocent when it comes to the book world. After eight years of interviewing, he has learned as much about why titles sell, or don’t sell, as he has about the books themselves. The result, he suggests, is not a pretty picture, especially for writers of quality nonfiction.

“Just like every other business in this country, the publishing industry is going through a dramatic change,” Lamb notes. “The owners are saying they aren’t making as much money as they should, so they’re forcing companies to look at the bottom line closer than they used to. . . . And they’re paying tremendous amounts of money to people for star quality and celebrity status in order to sell books.

“It’s hard to understand, but 85% of the books published in this country don’t make money, and we all live off the 15% that do. And that’s probably a factor of paying too much of an advance to too many people. That’s the way it works.”

Sometimes the truth hits close to home. Peter Osnos, the respected head of Times Books, left the Random House division last year amid speculation that the publishing giant had grown impatient with public affairs titles that generated little profit. Osnos--who acquired and published Lamb’s book--since has formed a new venture that will publish nonfiction with help from foundations, Wall Street firms, the Public Broadcasting System and other sources, a novel financial arrangement.

The window of opportunity for quality nonfiction may be shrinking in the big New York publishing houses, but unlike some industry critics, Lamb is not pessimistic.

“It doesn’t matter what I think, to be honest, because it’s happening,” he says. “No one individual can stop it. It’s the marketplace. Now, I don’t like the fact that serious books are taking a back seat. But if they matter at all in this culture of ours, we will figure out a way to keep publishing them.”

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Lamb stops suddenly and, with almost pained modesty, points out that he is not, technically, an author. He notes that unlike biographers, essayists or historians, he merely compiled selections from TV interviews for a book, with ample help from his personal staff and Random House to complete the task.

“This has all been a learning experience for me . . . reading these books, putting the book out, the network, everything,” he adds. “I try very hard to keep remembering that.”

Indeed, the very idea that he has become something of a book pundit seems to embarrass him. Lamb is the first to admit that there was nothing in his childhood to suggest that one day he would be hosting a premier television forum for serious writers.

Born in Lafayette, Ind., he is the son of parents who read newspapers avidly, but relatively few books. He was exposed to the classics in high school and college but remembers little of the experience. For years, his chief goal was to be a disc jockey, work sock hops and one day enter the Navy.

In high school, however, he developed an interest in broadcasting and soon was pointed on a media career path. After a stint in the Navy, he became a Pentagon press officer in 1966, beginning more than 30 years of work in Washington.

He held a series of jobs, including a telecommunication post with the Nixon administration and a reporting job with Cablevision magazine. It was there, in 1977, that he helped persuade key members of Congress to pave the way for cable TV broadcasts of the House. Two years later, armed with a $25,000 grant from cable entrepreneur Robert Rosencrans, Lamb sought contributions from cable TV firms to bankroll what would become C-SPAN. He began broadcasting out of a small office in Virginia, and the network has grown steadily over 18 years.

Unmarried and with no children, Lamb lives in Arlington, Va., with a longtime girlfriend and says he devotes much of his spare time to books. It’s almost a necessity, given that he has read every one of the 421 titles showcased on “Booknotes.”

“I’m really not evangelical,” he says. “But I want to take this book we just produced, and walk up to people and say: ‘Do you realize what all these authors have done for you?’ ”

Lamb seems taken aback by his remark and flashes the polite, embarrassed smile that has become a C-SPAN signature. In a world where TV can cheapen emotions, he’s got his on a tight leash.

“Look,” he says, rephrasing his comments, “some people will see me walking around with a book all the time and they’ll think I’m a whack job. You know, get a life and all that.

“But the fact is, all of this stuff has been enormously satisfying for me. I’ve grown--and I hope viewers have too.”

* All of the 421 interviews featured on “Booknotes” can be accessed on the Internet at https://www.c-span.org.