N+1 Literary Magazine Now Available on Espresso Book Machines

” n+1 is thrilled to make its archive of back issues available on Espresso Book Machines through On Demand Books. Several n+1 back issues are out of print (specifically Number Five: Decivilizing Process, Number Six: Mainstream, and Number Ten: Self-Improvement). Several other issues may very well have become unavailable in the near future were it not for our decision to partner with On Demand Books. As a magazine that has always placed a special emphasis on its printed form, it means a lot to n+1 that an issue’s life in print doesn’t simply end when copies run out; print isn’t “dead,” far from it: it’s there when you need it,” says Ian Epstein, Business Manager.

“We’re excited to offer our EBM retailers and libraries more than just books via our network, and given that literary magazines have such broad appeal, this is a natural fit and a great partnership,” says Dane Neller, CEO of On Demand Books.

The EBM is the only digital-to-print at-retail solution on the market today. With the push of a button, a title can be printed with a full-color cover, bound, and trimmed to any standard size. In a matter of minutes, it emerges from the EBM as a bookstore-quality paperback book, which the customer can pay for and walk out the store with right there and then.

Content from publishers is fed to the EBM via EspressNet, On Demand Books’ growing digital network of titles (currently numbering over seven million). Much like an iTunes for books, EspressNet retrieves, encrypts, transmits, and catalogues books from a multitude of English and foreign language content providers, including public domain, in-copyright, and self-published titles. Through the SelfServe software, writers can format, design, edit, and upload their books for printing through the EBM, and for inclusion in EspressNet. SelfServe will soon also be able to convert print files to the ePub format suitable for e-readers.

The EBM provides a new sales channel for publishers, and vastly increases the availability of titles for physical bookstores, significantly reducing loss of sales due to books being out-of-stock. In addition, the EBM technology offers libraries and bricks-and-mortar retailers the opportunity to become community self-publishing centers, providing a new distribution platform for self-published authors. And of course the EBM improves overall efficiency and environmental sustainability by eliminating shipping and the return and pulping of unwanted books.

About On Demand Books

On Demand Books was cofounded in 2003 by Jason Epstein, former Editorial Director of Random House; Dane Neller, former CEO of Dean & DeLuca; and Thor Sigvaldason, former technology consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Espresso Book Machines have been placed in bookstores, libraries, universities, and other locations in the USA, Canada, the UK, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and the Caribbean. In September 2010, On Demand Books and Xerox announced a partnership whereby Xerox will market, sell or lease and service the Espresso Book Machine worldwide. Made in the USA, Espresso Book Machines are environmentally efficient, reducing production, shipping, and waste.

About n+1

n+1 is a Brooklyn-based magazine of literature, culture, and politics published three times yearly. It was founded in 2004 by Keith Gessen, Mark Greif, Chad Harbach, Benjamin Kunkel, and Marco Roth – all of whom have gone on to write acclaimed novels, memoirs, or works of criticism (Keith Gessen’s All the Sad Literary Young Men; Mark Greif’s Bluescreen, available in German only; Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision, and Marco Roth’s forthcoming The Scientists). n+1 immediately attracted attention in New York and beyond. A. O. Scott described the publication in the New York Times Magazine as part of “a generational struggle against laziness and cynicism”; the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote, “they intend nothing less than to reimagine and reestablish the world.”

Since its founding, n+1 has published Elif Batuman’s remarkable first essays (later collected in The Possessed), Mark Greif’s classic essay “Against Exercise” (Issue 1), a terrific symposium on the state of American writing (Issue 4), excerpts from Helen DeWitt’s latest novels (most recently Lightning Rods in Issue 12), and other memorable pieces. Each issue is about the length of a novel (200 pages), and features criticism, memoirs, fiction, reviews, and political essays. The organization has also branched out into publishing a small book series and maintaing a research collective that conducts collaborative research on a diverse array of topics.