City Spotlight: Exploring Seattle's Book Ecosystem
When the Modernist Cuisine project was first taking shape, Editor-in-Chief Wayt Gibbs looked to the generous spirit that infuses Seattle’s literary community. “A huge help was getting advice from Ed Marquand, who has produced gorgeous, small-run art books for many years,” he says. “We learned everything we needed to know about making deluxe, high-end editions. He was very free and open with his counsel, putting us in touch with prepress company iocolor. Both Ed and iocolor connected us with talent: copy editors, typesetters, proofreaders. We drew on their alumni.”
The result was the six-volume, $625 Modernist Cuisine set that set the foodie world on fire in 2011, and which could never have been published in its final form with a traditional publishing model. Seattle’s tech industry informs the nature of publishing in Seattle, and not just in terms of digital publishing. “If we had taken a traditional publishing route, we wouldn’t have had the freedom to scale up to this size. This view — that big payoffs come from big gambles — is not unusual for Seattle and the West Coast. If you’re going to do something new, you have to come out of the gate strong with your first effort. Go big or go home,” Gibbs adds.
- Companies:
- Amazon.com