September 11 Tragedy
To account for this gap in the marketplace, the company partnered with Digitz.net. After that, in May 2000, GreatUnpublished.com was launched. "For the first three months, we were printing our own books. Then, we started working with a core group of grass roots e-book publishers who realized that e-books alone wouldn't make a business. We dealt with the challenge of working with people who had no expectations for what the books looked like," recounts Davis. "We helped people become print publishers and we taught ourselves what not to do and what to do better." In August, a separate print and fulfillment business was spun-off to cater to other publishers. Later that year, the group ran into another obstacle: no profitable POD Web channel through which to sell books. To satisfy this need, BookSurge was created to be the front-end for the process and to avoid traditional inventory problems.