The Troy Book Makers’ name sounds a little like it’s run by guys who’ll give you odds at Saratoga.

No, they don’t make book. They make books.

Let’s say you’ve always dreamed of publishing your novel. You could spend lots of frustrating time pitching it to various publishers and feeling the sting of rejection. And you could publish it yourself on line, but you’ll need to find editors and illustrators. And then how do you get it into stores? This is where Troy Book Makers comes in.

More than just a vanity press, Troy Book Makers can help hook writers up with editors and illustrators, work with them on the layout and design process and put their books in local stores. And unlike many small presses, as the writer, you keep the rights to your work. If you’re just looking for someone to help with the printing – they’re OK with that too.

See the full article here.

GUILDERLAND — Literary critics who have been predicting the death of the memoir for many years now haven’t met Vicki Schacter or visited the packed workshops of the Memoir Project at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy.

After taking a writing workshop from Marion Roach Smith at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy several years ago, Schacter, 75, recently published her memoir, “Lessons from My Father and the Dalai Lama.”

Vicki Schacter, a Guilderland author. (James Goolsby / Times Union)

It focuses on a defining moment in Schacter’s life in 1960 in which she worked for nearly a year as a volunteer nurse in a refugee camp for Tibetan children in Dharamsala in northern India, alongside the Dalai Lama, his mother and sister. Both he and Schacter were in their mid-20s at the time.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, took refuge in India with his family after the start of the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959. “I had lunch with the Dalai Lama, saw him often and found him very calm and wise,” Schacter recalled. “The Tibetans were such lovely, positive people and my time with them deeply influenced my life.”

Bookloft owner, Eric Wilska poses with local poet David Jaicks, an author he helped get published. photo by Will Whitehorn

GREAT BARRINGTON-For anyone planning to write that classic American novel, one local publisher is taking at least some of the difficulty out of the equation.

The Bookloft, in collaboration with the Book House of Stueyvesant Plaza in Albany, N.Y., is beginning its first year as an independent, digital printing service, known locally as The Troy Book Makers.

The service provides authors the opportunity to see that mystery tale or book of poetry they’ve been kicking around for years finally see the light of day.

For a relatively nominal price – approximately $175 -the partnership will print and produce a short, 10-copy run of any work (except stories of misogyny or advocating violence) and even put the book up for sale in its stores.

Eric Wilska, owner of the Bookloft, explained that “Basically, it all came about because everything in the world is digitized,” Wilska said. “It was time to join the digitized world. It’s a perfect niche for us to be able to do short runs for authors.”

Wilska, who partners with Book House owner, Susan Novotny, said any file produced on a personal computer can be modified into book form without trying to peddle the work to a publisher.

While the books produced may lack the scope or the commercial possibilities, Wilska contends that the author’s have different objectives.

“We have authors who are happy if they sell 50 copies,”Wilska said. “We have one teacher who teaches Huckleberry Finn and we can customize Huck Finn to have her questions for the class at the end of each chapter. In that way, some of what we do has an impact on education.”

David Jaicks, a local poet, said he just recently produced and released a book of poetry through The Troy Book Makers.

He said the opportunity to see his work in print, and to support local industry, were behind his efforts to have his poetry published.

“I’m not trying to make a living at it,” Jaicks said. “I like to meet people who are part of the writing world, and that’s how I got started in this. It’s been a very positive experience for me.”

Bernie Drew, a Berkshire historian, has published two books with the Book Makers – local histories “Dam Beavers” and “Berkshire Forests” – and is considering having a third published in the near future.

Drew, who has also had works accepted by more mainstream publishers, said the differences between the two – at their core -were not that vast.

“You’re not going to make money either way you do it,” Drew said. “There’s a great satisfaction in doing it, people wanting to see their material read. I like writing local history, it’s my passion.”

Maxine Carter-Lome, co-owner of the Weathervane Inn in Egremont, said she was looking for a present for her father’s 70th birthday when she learned of the Bookloft’s program.

The result was a book – “Ephemeral” – chronicling a collection of souvenirs well-known within the family.

“My grandfather had this collection of 1,000 autographs,” Lome said,”that I inherited several years ago. He had over 5,000 signatures – everything from presidential letters … literary minds, opera, ballet, theatre. It was a veritable who’s who of the 20th century.

 ”I had these published,” she continued, “and it was really something personal for me. It allows me to produce a memoir remembering him as an autograph collector, to take a look at a man who spent a lifetime collecting autographs.”

Lome said her dealings with the Bookloft made it all the more pleasurable.

“Publishing this book allowed me to see what it would look like in a short run,” she said. “They made it so easy, and it was relatively affordable, the price I would have paid for a birthday gift anyway.”

See this article at The Berkshire Record

by Michael DeMasi The Business Review

Two independent booksellers invested about $50,000 to start a digital, print-on-demand company in downtown Troy, N.Y., that will offer writers a low-cost way of getting books published.

The Troy Book Makers at 3 Third St. is a joint venture of The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Guilderland and The Bookloft in Great Barrington, Mass.

The print-on-demand company has published about 90 paperback titles, including family histories, memoirs, cookbooks, fiction and nonfiction, since opening about two years ago, said Melissa Batalin, business manager.

The Book House and The Bookloft relied on word-of-mouth promotion to let authors know about the service. Now they are actively publicizing the business.

“They wanted to test the waters and make sure everything is working out well,” Batalin said.

Eric Wilska, owner of The Bookloft, said he and Susan Novotny, owner of The Book House, opened the business to take advantage of digital technologies that are revolutionizing the way books are published and sold to consumers.

Those changes include downloading electronic copies of books onto devices such as the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle.

“If you don’t jump on this digital freight train it’s going to run you over,” Wilska said.

At The Troy Book Makers, writers can have as few as 10 copies of their book published for about $200 as long the work is in print-ready format. Other services, such as scanning photos and cover art, cost extra.

Larger print runs cost more. There is no maximum number that can be printed.

Other potential clients include corporations that need to print annual reports and churches that want to publish their history.

Similar print-on-demand publishing services are available through other companies. The Troy Book Makers is competitive on price and offers writers a local option to get their book published, Batalin said.

The Book House and The Bookloft also will sell the books published by the Troy Book Makers in their stores if the authors wish. Wilska said about 30 percent of the writers thus far have declined the option.

Of those titles that have been stocked on shelves, some sold better than others. None have been picked up by large publishing houses and printed for a wider audience.

“I can assure you we haven’t had a Stephen King so far,” Wilska said.

Nevertheless, the Troy Book Makers has attracted enough business that Wilska and Novotny are looking for more space.

They want to keep the company close to Novotny’s other store in downtown Troy, Market Block Books, at the corner of River and Third streets.

Besides book publishing, the digital printing equipment may be a precursor to the next generation of book selling, Wilska said.

He can envision the day when big publishing houses don’t bother printing copies of less-popular titles. Instead, they would zap a digital copy to a bookseller when the store receives a customer order. The book would then be printed on-site in about 20 minutes.

The technology is already available, he said, but publishing houses must work out issues with quality control and author copyrights.

 See the article at The Business Review (Albany) 

The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza has formed a partnership with The Bookloft in Great Barrington, Mass., to launch a digital print-on-demand service for authors who’d like to see their works in print.

The endeavour is called “The Troy Book Makers,” and it’s located in downtown Troy, next to Market Block Books in the John Scanlon Block at Third and River streets. Market Block, of course, is the Troy branch of The Book House. Both independent bookstores are owned by Susan Novotny.

The business prints your book in quantities as few as 10 copies, with costs starting at about $200. Additional copies are less expensive and can be reordered in a matter of days.

Troy Book Makers has actually been open for about two years.

“We had a soft opening,” an employee said this morning. It wasn’t until today that press releases on the opening finally made it to the media.

Troy Book Makers also offers editing and design services, and will even stock the book in The Book House and The Bookloft, although there was no mention of whether Market Block Books would carry it.

“When it comes to books, we do it all,” said Novotny. “We read them, write them, print them, publish them, promote them and sell them. And we do it quicker, easier and less expensive than the big houses.”

Troy Book Makers can be reached at 689-1083.

Click here to see the story at The Times Union

by Judith Rosen

One year and 70 books later, the Troy Book Makers in Troy, N.Y., a small-scale Print-on-Demand venture started last summer by Eric Wilska, owner of the Bookloft in Great Barrington, Mass., and Susan Novotny, owner of the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, N.Y., is about to expand. It will double its space this fall to better accommodate an InstaBook machine, copy machines and binders for perfect and spiral binding.

“We’re really having growing pains,” said Wilska, who described business at the Troy Book Makers, which is located next to Novotny’s Troy store, Market Block Books, as “slow and steady.” The key lesson the two have learned is that someone must be appointed to oversee the operation. “Bookstores think, ‘We’ll train one of our booksellers to do this.’ It’s not going to happen,” said Wilska. “You have to have a good designer/businessperson to run it.” At Troy, running the unit is the full-time job of Melissa Batalin, who occasionally receives help from other store employees.

Novotny’s stores have benefited the most from signings with POD authors like Kathy Cohen, whose look at raising a child with autism, Mom, Are You Listening?, sold 100 copies in two hours at Market Block Books and then went back to press next door. Wilska is publishing facsimile editions of public-domain titles like Willard Douglas Coxey’s Ghosts of Old Berkshire that he can sell in the dozens at his store.

Recently Wilska and Novotny turned the Troy Book Makers into a complete vertical business model with the introduction of a series of original guides, which they are publishing themselves and distributing to other outlets. The first, which came out in the spring, Dining in the Berkshires, has 650 copies in print after two trips to press. In fact, the book has sold so well that Wilska had to do the second printing of 400 copies at an offset printer. Future dining guides will be geared to the Capital region around Albany and Lake George/Saratoga.

To find more publishing clients, Novotny and Wilska have decided against opening a second storefront or advertising heavily on the Web in favor of attending the NEIBA trade show in September. “We actually spent $1,000 for a table to let our colleagues know that we can do proprietary publishing and to get them to send customers to us for a referral fee,” explained Novotny.

The buzz is beginning to build about what the Troy Book Makers can do. Last month well-known writer Jon Katz, author of Dog Days (Villard, June), contacted Novotny about printing one of his less commercial projects, a collection of poetry. The reasons Katz or any other writer would come to Troy Book Makers rather than iUniverse, said Wilska, are the same as shopping at an independent: it’s small and has a knowledgeable and personable staff.

See the article in Publishers Weekly

Troy Book Makers markets to people looking to publish as few as 10 copies of their own work or an old favorite

By TIM O’BRIEN, Staff writer

TROY — There is a new bookmaking operation in downtown Troy.

No, it’s not an illegal gambling enterprise. It’s a new business that is betting there is a market for people who want to publish small numbers of their books.

Local fiction authors can get that novel out of the bottom drawer and have it printed and bound. You can add extra spice to a family reunion by printing up 20 copies of a collection of grandma’s recipes. Teachers can print copies of books that are no longer under copyright, such as “Huckleberry Finn,” with notes and questions appended for students to use.

In fact, the InstaBook machine comes with 10,000 titles already installed for printing, popular books whose copyrights have expired.

Located at 3 Third Street, Troy Book Makers is right next door to Market Block Books. That store’s owner, Susan Novotny, co-owns the new business with Eric Wilska, owner of the Bookloft in Great Barrington, Mass.

The new store’s name is meant to be a play on Troy’s history as a gambling mecca.

“We’re aware of the Troy history and the double entendre of our name,” Wilska said. “We picked Troy because of its proximity to Susan’s Market Block Books, and we dig Troy.”

For $175, the store will publish 10 copies of a book. For another $125, they’ll publish 10 more copies. Groups of 10 after that are $85 each.

For additional fees, they’ll design a cover, edit the copy, print a proof, help with marketing or acquire an ISBN number and bar code that allows a book to be ordered at any bookstore online, in the United States and even overseas.

Ordering a printing can be done online at http://www.thetroybook makers.com, with the manuscript e-mailed to the store and the books shipped back.

“We will never lay eyes on 80 percent of our customers,” Wilska said. “That’s another example of how the Internet is revolutionizing the writing and publishing world. The marketplace is now global.”

If the author wants, the book will be placed on the shelf for six months at the Bookloft, Market Block Books and the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza, which Novotny also owns. The display has a twofold purpose: letting authors sell their books in a store and enabling the owners to advertise their printing business.

Former Albany City Councilman Nebraska Brace was one of the first customers. He has ordered 200 copies of his memoir, “A Man Named Nebraska.”

“I never knew it could be so frustrating, working with publishers. It’s time-consuming,” said Brace, who tried to sell his book through the traditional route before turning to the publish-on-demand business. “It’s very attractive. I felt very good about it.”

Brace said he is excited because the book can be done in a week. He said the store owners encouraged him to start with 100 books and see how they sold before ordering more, but he was confident he could sell the 200.

The print-on-demand business also enables copies to be made of older books, like histories of Troy, that are out of print. The store was printing “Ghosts of Old Berkshire” by Willard Douglas Coxey, a book from 1934 that Wilska was copying for his store.

“In five or 10 years, you’ll walk into your local bookstore and you’ll say, ‘Do you have “Drums Along the Mohawk?’ ” he said. “We’ll say no, but do you have some errands to run? We’ll run you a copy.”

While the vanity press business has been around for a long time, they have always required large initial printings because setup is the most costly part of the process. People would have to order 1,000 books and be stuck with most of them, he said.

“You end up with the 900 copies stuck in your garage,” he said.

The book covers the store produces are all paperback, with different stocks of paper, and prices rise if a standard-sized book exceeds 250 pages. The press cannot print single books with more than 500 pages.

Melissa Batalin, manager and art director of the store, said people poke their heads in every day and are enthusiastic about the idea. Ten people already have ordered books.

“At least once a day, someone walks in off the street and is interested in what I am doing,” she said.

Books can be printed within one day if they are already properly formatted, a week if the store needs to format it.

In an age when getting a book published can be difficult, Wilska said their business offers authors an alternative way to get their work out without having to pay a heavy price upfront.

“Random House is not about selling one book here and book there,” he said. “They want ‘The DaVinci Code,’” he said. “Memoirs are a huge business now, but they are not going to be a huge seller – ‘My Life in Troy.’ “

Originally published by The Times Union

New sideline: print on demand

by Judith Rosen 

Forget gifts and cards. In a time of flattening sales, longtime booksellers Eric Wilska, owner of the Bookloft in Great Barrington, Mass., and Susan Novotny, owner of the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, N.Y., have found what could be the ultimate sideline business, printing their own books. Last week marked the soft opening of their joint POD venture, the Troy Book Makers in Troy, N.Y., which is both a storefront business adjacent
to Novotny’s Market Block Books store and an Internet operation found at www.thetroybookmakers.com.

“One of my mantras is to stop carping about Barnes & Noble. Here’s one thing you can do: find a profitable niche,” said Wilska. After watching his sales level off after climbing steadily for most of the past 32 years, he views on-demand printing as a viable alternative revenue source. “You don’t have to be a visionary to look down the pike and see that bookstores, like video stores, aren’t dinosaurs, but they are less critical [than they were],” he said.

For Novotny, some of the biggest advantages of the InstaBook machine—which she and Wilska are leasing with an option to buy—are its affordability coupled with its speed. It can produce a perfect-bound book in two to three minutes. Based on the number of first-time authors who stop by their stores with books produced through iUniverse, Booklocker and Lulu, Novotny has no doubts that she and Wilska can keep the InstaBook humming. For a flat rate of $175, Troy Book Makers will print a trade paperback book of up to 250 pages, with black-and-white text and interior graphics, and a color cover.

In addition to selling the books written by local customers, Novotny and Wilska are planning to reprint local histories to sell in their stores. Other printing opportunities include genealogical memoirs, coursepacks, dissertations and book manuscripts that writers want to print to submit to larger houses. The machine also comes loaded with 10,000 titles that are in the public domain and can be printed when ordered.

“We’re hoping it’s one of those if-you-build-it-they-will-come things,” said Wilska, adding it’s only a matter of time before many large independents get involved in print-on-demand. Indeed, during BookExpo America in Washington, D.C., several booksellers visited the World Bank bookstore, which recently installed a new Espresso Book Machine.

Wilska is aware that starting a publishing business is complicated and involves an investment in time and money. Troy Book Makers has its own staff, for example. But while the company is just setting up operations, Wilska believes it is possible that the POD business could expand to four or five storefronts.

Expansion was the result at Book Ends in Ridgewood, N.J., the first independent to install an InstaBook machine. In March, Book Ends co-owner Walter Boyer sold his share of the print-on-demand business to his former partner Tim Harper and business manager James Potter, who relocated the operation and renamed it Long Dash Publishing. “It had done better than anyone had imagined,” said Potter. “But it also reached a plateau. We wanted to try new things.” Among them, he said, is expanding the POD operation by becoming a trade publisher with distribution to Ingram and other wholesalers. Book Ends continues to carry some of Long Dash’s books and to refer customers to the publisher.

See the article at Publishers Weekly