Interesting New Development

Interesting new development indeed

I was at Lifeway Christian Store to get a song to sing Sunday and it was the first time we’ve used Lifeway’s new system to burn accompaniment tracks in house. Several thousand songs that you just look up and if they have it you can listen to it and then burn the track right there. 

Too cool. 

It immediately made me think that it won’t be long until books will be printed that way too. A number of larger stores can already do it. I was talking to the Mardel’s rep at ACFW and they are already putting the POD systems in their stores.

It’s a brave new world. Authors or artists still earn their royalties just like a print book and they can AFFORD TO SHELVE AUTHORS THAT THEY WOULDN’T HAVE ACQUIRED IN PRINT FORM because they didn’t have the name identification to merit the expenditure. I think that’s going to be a win-win. Even new authors can be shelved in stores they formerly did not have available to them. Not only that, but it means they will be able to keep our backlist available for sale.

Author who have backlist titles know how difficult it is, even with a new book out, to have places that will allow us to sell backlist titles while we are having a signing for the new one. Now they can go over and have the book run off and bring it right over to be signed. 

I know this capability is starting to be available but don’t know how quickly we will start seeing it, particularly outside of the major stores in the large cities. But it is interesting to think about, isn’t it?