Are There Any Cooperative or Commons-orientated Print-to-Order Companies?
Danyl Strype
Public
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Like digital publishing, print-to-order companies like Lulu.com allow authors to put their work into print, without having to come up with massive capital advances to fund large print runs, and without having to house and distribute all these pre-printed copies, which may or may not sell. I'm considering self-publishing a book later in the year and I'm wondering, does anyone knows of a print-to-order company which is a democratic cooperative, either author-owned, or employee-owned, and/or has other attributes which harmonize with the values of the libre commons movement?
Stacco Troncoso Wed 16 Mar 2016 6:24AM
Hi gang, I'm copying and pasting a comment we've got for one of the blog posts promoting the Think Global/Print local campaign
You might be interested in the “publish on demand” / “public authoring” approach used in Proboscis’ (a UK non profit org) Bookleteer.com self-publishing platform. It combines a unique paper folding technique to turn A4/A3 sheets printed on domestic printers into physical books as well as having online digital versions. All free for anyone anywhere to make & use.
I've invited the commenter to join this group and chip in!
Danyl Strype · Fri 11 Mar 2016 2:57AM
Thanks to everyone who has shared ideas here. I think this really matters. I think books matter. Putting a well-written book in someone's hands as they prepare for some time off can allow them to dive deep into a complex subject that's new to them, in a way that no amount of sending them web links can achieve.
At the same time, I live on an island in the South Pacific, and I don't want to be racking up thousands of book miles (think 'food miles') to achieve this, when every country (and maybe every city) has the potential to print their own books for their own populations. Nor do I want to prop up a legacy book publishing industry that is exploitative for all the same reasons as the music, tv, and movie industries (concentrated ownership by corporations, copyright bullying etc), when there are cooperative print shops and book distribution networks (eg AK Press) I could work with instead. I think we've started an important discussion here, and I'd love to see more people involved in the aforementioned cooperatives join in.