OR Books and On Demand Books Partnership Boosts New Distribution Model

OR Books, the progressive fiction and non-fiction publisher, and On Demand Books, the company behind the Espresso Book Machine® (EBM), have entered into an agreement to make OR Books’ list available from the EBM’s “digital-to-print at retail (DPR)” sales channel. This agreement will enable OR Books to deliver their content to readers all over the world,through On Demand Books’ global network of sixty-eight EBM locations.

“OR Books are known for the high quality of their titles, and for their innovative, forward-thinking approach to publishing,” said Dane Neller, CEO of On Demand Books. “We look forward to working with them to fulfill the potential of the EBM’s digital-to-print-at-retail sales channel to bring their content to book-buyers worldwide.”

“We at OR make a practice of exploring new ways of selling books, and On Demand Books provides a way for us to quickly reach some of the best retail outlets and libraries out there,” said John Oakes, cofounder of OR Books. “Stores can carry our books with no on-hand inventory, consumers get what they want, and authors and publisher benefit. We’re delighted to be a part of the ongoing retail revolution!”

OR Books sells its books worldwide, direct to readers. To avoid the waste of unsold copies, OR produces its books only when they are wanted, either through print-on-demand or as platform-agnostic e-books. This approach jettisons the inefficiencies of conventional publishing to better serve readers, writers and the environment.

The EBM is the only digital-to-print at-retail solution on the market today. With the push of a button, a title can be printed with a full-color cover, bound, and trimmed to any standard size. In a matter of minutes, it emerges from the EBM as a bookstore-quality paperback book, which the customer can pay for and walk out the store with right there and then.

Content from publishers, now including OR Books, is fed to the EBM via EspressNet, On Demand Books’ growing digital network of titles (currently numbering over seven million). Much like an iTunes for books, EspressNet retrieves, encrypts, transmits, and catalogues books from a multitude of English and foreign language content providers, including public domain, in-copyright, and self-published titles. Through the SelfServe software, writers can format, design, edit, and upload their books for printing through the EBM, and for inclusion in EspressNet. SelfServe will soon also be able to convert print files

to the ePub format suitable for e-readers.

The EBM provides a new sales channel for publishers, and vastly increases the availability of titles for physical bookstores, significantly reducing loss of sales due to books being out-of-stock. In addition, the EBM technology offers libraries and bricks-and-mortar retailers the opportunity to become community self-publishing centers, providing a new distribution platform for self-published authors. And of course the EBM improves overall efficiency and environmental sustainability by eliminating shipping and the return and pulping of unwanted books.

About On Demand Books

On Demand Books was cofounded in 2003 by Jason Epstein, former Editorial Director of Random House; Dane Neller, former CEO of Dean & DeLuca; and Thor Sigvaldason, former technology consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Espresso Book Machines have been placed in bookstores, libraries, universities, and other locations in the USA, Canada, the UK, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and the Caribbean. In September 2010, On Demand Books and Xerox announced a partnership whereby Xerox will market, sell or lease and service the Espresso Book Machine worldwide. Made in the USA, Espresso Book Machines are environmentally efficient, reducing production, shipping, and waste. For more information, go to www.ondemandbooks.com.

About OR Books

OR Books is a new type of publishing company. It embraces progressive change in politics, culture and the way we do business. It was founded in 2010 by two longtime veterans of the book publishing industry, John Oakes and Colin Robinson. Robinson had been a senior editor at Scribner, publisher of The New Press and managing director of Verso; Oakes publisher of Four Walls Eight Windows, vice president of the Avalon Publishing Group, and publisher of such imprints as Thunder's Mouth Press and Nation Books. For more information, go to www.orbooks.com.