• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Login
  • Register

Publishers Lunch

The Publishing Industry's Daily Essential Read

  • Publishers Marketplace
  • Site Guide
  • Help

Bookselling: Now Official, Elliott Bay Is Relocating; Author Solutions Partners with Espresso

December 10, 2009
By Michael Cader

Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Co. has now confirmed that they will leave their 36-year-old location in Pioneer Square and move to the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood “as early as March” of next year. Owner Peter Aaron tells the Seattle Times, “Here are the factors I’m looking at: parking, population, daytime and nighttime vitality and foot traffic, the absence of stadiums and conflicts with parking and crowding,” he said. “It’s the attractiveness and safety and vibrancy of the location.”

Aaron says “our financing is in place going forward” and “is thrilled about 85 parking spaces for the new location that will be either cheap or free to customers.” The new 20,000-square-foot space will be smaller than the current store, “but will have a greater selling area because the space will be used more efficiently, Aaron said.”
Times

As booksellers are learning, the real potential market for the Espresso Book Machine is self-publishing and local publishing rather than summoning print copies of forgotten classics. To that end, self-publishing giant Author Solutions has partnered with On Demand Books, which produces the Espresso, to “provide writers with an online toolset to publish, distribute, print, and market their books in retail locations via the Espresso Book Machine.” The process isn’t exactly clear, though the release says “ASI will create and operate Web-based self-publishing services that will be available to the Espresso Book Machine retailers, who can then private-label these services under their own branded Web sites. Writers can avail themselves of these online services from remote locations or on in-store computer monitors, and have their books printed while they wait.” There is no indication of pricing in the release.

Of course retailers can harness the Espresso’s self-publishing potential directly already, so presumably relevant retailers will evaluate the new offer closely to see how it expands their current capabilities.

Also overlooked by many is that retailers don’t need to invest in an in-store Espresso to offer self-publishing and local publishing services. They can use Lightning Source and a variety of other vendors–the service is in helping customers, identifying local publishing opportunities and partnerships, and leveraging the store (shelf space, parties, promotion, etc.) to maximize the profit from such ventures and make a store a true local resource. Printing out those books on the spot, and investing $100,000 in equipment, are not essential to that strategy.
Release

Filed Under: Bookstores, Free, Self-publishing

sidebar

Primary Free Sidebar

Login


Forgot password
Quick Pass users click here to log in
Get Full Access
The publishing industry's essential daily read

Each Publishers Lunch Deluxe subscription includes full access to our searchable multi-year archive of industry news, a nightly email reporting 10 to 50 deal transactions, and our database of industry contacts, scripts, and posting privileges.

Learn More

RSS Automat

  • Harper UK Edits Agatha Christie Novels to Remove "Offensive" Language March 27, 2023 The Guardian
  • NYU Launches Five-Day "Advanced Publishing Institute" Program for January 2024 March 25, 2023 NYU site
  • Hachette UK to Publish "Spare Us!" Parody on April 6 March 23, 2023 Publisher site
  • Netflix to Stream Series Based on Ramit Sethi's Book, "How to Get Rich" March 23, 2023 THR
  • James Patterson Signs First-Look Development Deal with Skydance Television March 22, 2023 Deadline
  • "I find it kind of stunning that the [Internet] Archive would put its entire free service at risk over such an obviously wrong stand" March 21, 2023 Dan Kennedy / Media Nation
  • Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo Is Being Adapated Into a TV Series by A24 March 21, 2023 Deadline
  • Reid Hoffman Posts a Free eBook About His Experiences with ChaptGPT-4 March 16, 2023 Free PDF
  • Siri Hustvedt Reveals that Paul Auster Is Receiving Cancer Treatment at Sloan Kettering March 14, 2023 Instagram post
  • John Jakes Dies at 90 March 14, 2023 NYT
© 2023 Publishers Lunch. All Rights Reserved.