Shelf Awareness - Daily Enlightenment for the Book Trade

 

Literary Locavores: Booksellers As Publishers

Saying that "rather than trimming their sails, a number of independent booksellers are taking a page from Amazon by producing titles themselves," Salon.com highlighted several bookstore imprints. They include B&B Press, founded by Books & Books, with stores in South Florida, the Cayman Islands and Westhampton Beach, N.Y.; Burning Bush Press, an in-house press that Malaprop's, Asheville, N.C., has revived; and Hub City Books, part of the Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg, S.C., which also opened a bookstore in 2010.

"The leap into publishing by indies can be seen as the literary equivalent of the locavore movement," Salon wrote. "It not only emphasizes local writers, and local subjects, but also asks residents to support a local business with their dollars."

Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books explained the simple, effective dynamic: "If someone loves our bookstore, has been coming in for years, understands what we're trying to do, and you can put a great book in their hands that was published by our store, I mean, who's going to say no to that?"