Distribution and wholesaling in this industry is a mess. A lot of these firms - SPD included - were living in the 20th century when it came to all areas of operations. I'm not surprised to hear the news that they are consolidating further.<p>Even before SPD went out of business, it was very difficult to get "traditional distribution" that enables sales in bookstores. Indie publishers often forego distribution (and by extension, bookstore sales) and go it alone with their own websites, direct sales to individual retailers, and print on demand through Ingram and Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.<p>I recommend the following article for insights into challenges faced by SPD:<p><i>The Berkeley publishing mindset of the 1970s was singular and beautiful in many ways. These people did not set out to be celebrities or to make names for themselves per se, or even to strike it rich. The orientation to publishing was around books for their cultural merit and value, and if they reached more readers than expected, wonderful. The ecosystem supported itself because everyone supported each other. If there were halcyon days in book publishing, this was it (not accounting for the truly problematic and systemic -isms that have since become so widely unveiled and understood). The afterglow lasted a good many years because I caught its tail end in the early 2000s when I started at North Atlantic Books. By then, these guys were in their 60s, starting to wind down, and many of them wouldn’t be around to tackle the tsunami of change that was on the horizon.</i><p><a href="https://brookewarner.substack.com/p/distribution-the-most-misunderstood" rel="nofollow">https://brookewarner.substack.com/p/distribution-the-most-mi...</a>
While I was in undergrad, I volunteered at SPD’s warehouse in Berkeley for a summer. Although I enjoyed my time there, and I learned a lot about non-profits, publishing and more, I found it be a very strange, tense, and awkward place to work. And cliquey. I did not feel welcome, seen or accepted. Kind of like the Bay Area at large over the past decade or more (and I speak as a regional native).<p>An anonymous former employee supports the claim that SPD was a poor place to work, run by toxic people: <a href="https://damagedbookworker.medium.com/terrorized-by-spd-612014765e7c" rel="nofollow">https://damagedbookworker.medium.com/terrorized-by-spd-61201...</a>
An anecdotal examination of a low-volume book written of someone I used to know. You can guess what also happened to their printer. [0] Dead tree carcasses with alternating dark and light patterns are quietly evaporating the way of piano tuners and cassette tapes. All "progress" is not progress, but it is that immensurable constant of life.<p>Perhaps independent bookshop-publishers like City Lights might want to think about finding others to go about adopting an existing printer or forming a social venture/semi non-profit POD and low-volume printer because it seems (unless I'm mistaken) they're reliant on just a few corporations like Ingram Industries to produce their wares. It's more difficult to replace lost niche capabilities than prevent the loss of a functional business that needs retooling, (re)investment, and/or more customers.<p>0. <a href="https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_wa/602029331" rel="nofollow">https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_wa/602029331</a>
Whatever you do don't use Lulu. They sell your name to some spammy India based robocall center that keeps trying to say they are interested in improving/buying your book.
> <i>an alarming email on her phone. After 55 years, Small Press Distribution (SPD)—one of the last remaining independent book distributors in the US—was shutting down immediately, with no advance notice or transitional support. Its website went dark, its Twitter account was deleted, and no one was answering calls.</i><p>Why not give warning of imminent shutdown?<p>> <i>To make matters worse, many small presses say SPD owes them money. “We’re owed upwards of $8,000,” says Gzemski. “We just released three books [at Noemi], and all of the preorder and event order revenue from those books has disappeared.</i> [...] Goettel says SPD owes Black Lawrence Press more than $17,000—an enormous sum for a small press.*<p>Was the reason for no warning that they needed or wanted the incoming revenue, which they might not have gotten if they'd given a warning?
I wonder what was the impact of the internet making it easy for everyone to just put together a website and dump their content in it.<p>I'm not even considering self-publishing services. Just buying a domain, pay a hosting company to host your site, and make it available for everyone.<p>I've been stumbling upon a few sites that follow the "book as a site" pattern. Some provide a free tier along with a premium access, which sometimes includes additional services.<p>Why would anyone go through the trouble and cost of printing out a book if putting up a website costs pennies?
i've been trying to get this on the front page, glad somebody did!<p>book industry distribution is a wreck. this is so bad for independent literature, and the literary ecosystem as a whole.<p>fuck ingram. my dream is to compete with them.
Am I the only one who thinks that, in a niche area that probably never got great distribution anyway, self-publishing though one of the major platforms isn't a pretty decent alternative? It's not like bookstores (with a few exceptions) are such a great distribution channel these days and you can always approach a few like City Lights to cut a deal.