Reading Local: Portland

Inspired by the news that three Seattle area bookstores have or will have the Espresso Book Machine at their store, Matt Briggs wrote a fantastic piece on Reading Local: Seattle yesterday about the impact this machine will have for bookstores, authors, and readers.  I highly recommend you check it out, here is a quick sample:

From a production standpoint, the machine is exciting, but both Chuck Robinson the owner of Village Books and Robert Sindelar, Partner at Third Place, pointed out that the operative word for the print-on-demand machine is demand. For Rob, he sees the machine providing an invaluable access to the vast library of hard-to-find, out-of-print, or backlist books that would have to be special ordered. Before, a customer would hear that they had to wait three weeks for a book to be special ordered, and now they only have to wait five or ten minutes. They can go get a cup of coffee and come back to pick up their book.

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And this was another area where both stores had a keen awareness: the machine changes the store from a site of book consumption to a site of book production. Both stores already had projects in mind. They plan to release books that were important to their community of readers. Village Book has a press called Chuckanut Editions, and plans to release some books right away that are in-store bestsellers. They plan on publishing a story favorite, a local history, Birth, Death and Resurrection of Fairhaven by George Hunsby. Third Place, too, has plans to begin an imprint and work with authors who have an existing relationship with the store.

Author: Gabe Barber

Founder and publisher of Reading Local. I am an avid reader, primarily of non-fiction, and am ever curious to discover how local literature fits into the increasingly volatile literary landscape.

Gabe Barber has written 1020 articles for us.