Red Wheel/Weiser Inspiration Now More Widely Available Via The Espresso Book Machine
New York, NY, May 18, 2012—Red Wheel/Weiser, the well-known metaphysical and self-help book publisher, has joined On Demand Books’ growing Espresso Book Machine program (EBM), via arrangement with Lightning Source. The arrangement provides independent bookstore customers with instant access to Red Wheel/Weiser’s backlist titles through EBM’s “digital-to-print at retail” sales channel.
“We’re excited to be part of On Demand’s expansion in 2012, providing us with a growth opportunity in the independent marketplace,” says Michael Kerber, President, Red Wheel/Weiser. “We realize shelf space is limited and it is challenging for booksellers to carry the full range of our backlist titles. The Espresso Machine affords us the opportunity to provide bookstore customers with a much larger selection.”
“Our unique sales channel helps keep niche publisher titles in print and more widely available for readers who prefer p-books, and we are very pleased that Red Wheel/Weiser has joined our growing list of spiritual and religious content,” says Dane Neller, CEO of On Demand Books.
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 Red Wheel/Weiser, 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.