Library Partners Press, A New Publisher for Independent Writers, is Announced

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., March 17, 2015 /PRNewswire-iReach/ The Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University is pleased to announce Library Partners Press, a born-digital content creation and curation publishing platform, dedicated to helping independent writers and readers succeed in their digital publishing-related pursuits: http://www.librarypartnerspress.org.

Founded in 2011 and re-branded in 2015, Library Partners Press already produces thousands of published pages per year, and enjoys the devotion of literally dozens of Twitter followers all of whom are invited to attend the annual spectacular-spectacular, Wake the eBooks: http://waketheebooks.info.

Drawing on the expertise of librarians and faculty and staff at and beyond Wake Forest University, Library Partners Press seeks to capture the attention of indie authors, consumers and really anyone interested in publishing scholarly, literary, creative, and popular or even unpopular works, in both electronic and print-on-demand formats.

"Independently-published books are having more and more impact on libraries," according to William P. Kane, the Director of Wake Forest's Digital Publishing enterprise. Kane adds, "Through Library Partners Press, the library will provide indie authors access to a modern toolset of book publishing techniques, resulting in post-modern manifestations of digital standards and trends that contribute to publishing acumen or something like that."

The tremendous distribution and discovery and potential (if not always realized) sales of born-digital books by indie-published authors have fueled not only the dreams of writers who want to try their hand at different genres or republish their own backlist titles once the rights have reverted, but also the nightmares (not to put too fine a point on it) of librarians and archivists charged with collecting and organizing such scholarly and literary work onto virtual or actual shelves. It's important to note that whereas for the past several decades libraries have had to manage with a universe of around a quarter-million new books being published each year, there are now suddenly maybe too suddenly something like one million new books being published every month. "Thanks, Amazon!," says Kane, with all irony intended.

Meanwhile, to help newly-digital authors succeed, Kane notes that the Library Partners Press will focus on traditional publishing arenas, such as the book's creation (including editing and cover design) and publication (which includes the manufacture and distribution of both the printed and the electronic book). Much of the book's marketing, including prices and royalties and reviews and such, is at the author's discretion.

"Our authors do get paid when they sell books up to 90% of any such resulting revenue," says Kane, "and our authors' books can be rendered suddenly if not instantly available everywhere seriously, it turns out that the Internet is a pretty big deal."

And yet there remain archival aspects that even the Internet can't fulfill, and so Library Partners Press seeks to complete the publishing circle back to libraries by producing content which librarians want and need to add to their permanent collections. As such, LP Press is working with traditional library suppliers to ensure that LP Press-published books are sustained on library shelves in perpetuity or close enough.

Meanwhile, and for the record,Library Partners Press is already producing high-quality books, and plenty of them. "And while libraries have been routinely collecting the best books for centuries, librarians face new challenges matching born-digital content to relatively old-school standards of collection development policies and procedures especially so now that that libraries are also creating their published content. Either way, the new trick is to make sure that that locally-created content lands back on the local library shelves. "Which is why we're hosting the Freakout this Spring," says Kane, reminding anyone who will listen to check in on the Wake the eBooks Festival: http://waketheebooks.info.

Library Partners Press will announce new titles this Fall.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150316/182053

Media Contact: William Kane, Wake Forest University Digital Publishing, 336-758-6181, kanewp@wfu.edu

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SOURCE Wake Forest University Digital Publishing

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