OR Books Avoids Amazon

OR Books recently thrilled me with their announcement to publish Gordon Lish: Collected Fictions (106 stories! 546 pages!) in late April. Their efficient print-on-demand and “platform-agnostic” e-book publishing model avoids waste, and a creative marketing strategy includes an extensive Internet presence and video accompaniment for their releases (see the fantastic Lish video here: Gordon Lish, Collected Fictions). A direct sales approach “jettisons the inefficiencies of conventional publishing to better serve readers, writers and the environment.” Direct means direct, and Co-publisher Colin Robinson discussed the implications of OR Book’s decision to avoid selling through Amazon over at The Huffington Post.

In starting our new publishing company we looked hard at what Amazon costs a small publisher, and what it provides in return. We decided it wasn’t worth it; that we would be better off on our own…When we arrive among them our pitch is not that of a big corporation fighting ruthlessly for market share. It’s that of a couple of editors who love the books they publish and hope to convey their enthusiasm to like-minded readers. For every e-mail we get querying why our books are not available on Amazon, we get another saying how much our new approach is appreciated. We’re keeping all the addresses; they’ll be hearing from us again.

For more info, watch OR Books: The Movie featuring Oakes and Robinson, then pre-order your copy of Lish’s collected works here.

OR Books from OR Books on Vimeo.

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