Integrating The Indie Press Into BiblioExpeditions' Marketing Campaign

For about a year I participated actively on the Pub-Forum.net listserv, a freewheeling discussion among independent publishers. Nicholas Weir-Williams noticed the write-up of BiblioExpeditions on the Shelf-Awareness e-newsletter this week, and cross-posted it on Pub-Forum -- bringing my attention back to a question that first came up when I started participating on Pub-Forum. Which is: Why is it that independent bookstores don't do a good job of supporting independent publishers? Why is it so hard for indie publishers to get their books into indie bookstores?

Tonight I wrote this post, on Pub-Forum. I think that it sounds a bit grandiose -- but also, given that this problem is barely being addressed, it might just have some truth to it. I hope so anyway.


Hello all,

Apologies for not paying attention to P-F for the past couple of months. Thanks to Nick for posting that article about the launch of my new company, which launch you can track on the blog: www.biblioexpeditions.com.

I believe I've got a key structural concept figured out, which is that I'll be running what is essentially an intercity shuttlebus among the biggest indie bookstores on the East Coast. I want to run literary events on the buses, and in these desitination/host stores, and, especially, in smaller stores reachable from those biggest indies. That is: the big indies will be serving as hubs from which reader-riders will branch out to visit smaller stores. And I want to help ensure this fanning-out of readers via literary programming at the smaller, target bookstores.

This implies the possibility for a centralized programming mechanism for author events that encompasses access to quite a few bookstores -- as well as many buses with presentation opportunities. How best to integrate small presses into this picture, or, better, FOCUS on small press and indie presses. I would like this to be the long awaited moment when indie publishing and indie bookselling become congruent in the readers' minds.

Andy Laties