March 17th, 2010
By
Chris Meadows
From the Nieman Lab comes a story of a bookstore in Boulder, Colorado that is trying a new distribution model for local authors. In addition to the usual selection of titles from big publishers, the Boulder Book Store offers a series of distribution packages for local authors selling print-on-demand titles on consignment.
Fees range from $25 to stock up to 5 copies of a book at a time through $255 to arrange an in-store reading and signing, as well as mentions in the store’s website and newsletter and other benefits.
And the books are selling. Not flying off the shelves…but sauntering off, steadily. In the first week in March, [store head buyer Arsen Kashkashian] told me, the store sold 75 consignment books — which, given the store’s 40-percent cut of those sales, and the authors’ fees, accounted for 3 percent of the store’s total revenues for the week. Part of that number, Kashkashian believes, is attributable to the authors’ efforts at self-promotion, which amplify the store’s own marketing strategy. “Some are blogging, some are on Twitter, some just trying to get out there by word of mouth,” he notes. “They’re working their networks, whether it’s online or offline. They’re kind of learning how to do it.”
This is exactly the sort of thing that bookstores are going to need to do in order to survive as they face pressure both from online booksellers and from the march of books toward electronic format. Not only is it finding new models of revenue but it is also taking an active role in the community, putting a local face on the book industry and connecting local authors to readers and vice versa.
And it is also giving those self-published authors a better shot at getting more widely known—perhaps helping to counteract that self-publishing stigma Paul mentioned a little while ago.
Will this model proliferate to other local and regional bookstores? It might be worth looking into.
Photo of Boulder Book Store by Jesse Varner used under a Creative Commons license.
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According to CrunchGear, the Alex Reader is taking a different path than some of its competitors. Their goal is is to work with publishing houses and periodicals to create a branded webstore and an unique GIU for each device. That way a newspaper or publisher could offer “their own” device at a subsidized price. In addition they are looking at getting universities to develop university-branded Alexes.
Originally posted at 
Amazon has released 
A reader, Edward, posted this 
In comments on a post relating to the announcement that iBooks on the iPad would be able to sync “free” EPUB books through iTunes, 
Received this email from Dave.
So many articles on the potential for e-textbooks! Chris Meadows 
