The management team of BiblioLabs didn’t exactly just wake up one day with an idea. It was more of an evolution. Although the founders all had very different backgrounds and skill sets, they were originally brought together by a common desire to see print-on-demand (POD) publishing become mainstream. The POD company they founded in 2000 was aptly named BookSurge. Notably, many of the challenges with POD publishing were similar in nature to the ones faced by BiblioLabs in that they required an automated technology solution to help bring operational efficiencies to an age-old industry.
After struggling for many years to achieve market acceptance by publishers, distributors and retailers, they reached a major milestone when BookSurge was acquired by Amazon.com in 2005 to broaden its catalog of offerings. POD and web retailing go hand in hand because neither have limited shelf space, yet by the same token, neither want to carry inventory. The technology was successfully integrated by Amazon who now sells millions of books to customers all over the world through Amazon print-on-demand.
With BiblioLabs, the original founders are continuing to work toward a seamless global book experience. Whether localized print-on-demand, eBooks, or mobile app reading — the world of books is an exciting place to create new business models and we are thrilled to still be at the heart of the new global publishing paradigm.
We also realize the life-blood of any sustainable enterprise is finding people willing to pay for the value you are creating. To this end, we never forget that we have to get up every day 1) trying to create products people will pay money for, 2) trying to find those people and 3) insuring that they are happy after they buy our products.
As curation of content becomes more important, BiblioLabs is focused on building the tools required to easily discover, enhance and re-publish content to appropriate audiences. Beyond software, we also work directly with organizations to breathe new life into historic books. Through our growing global print-on-demand business, we manage multiple imprints and projects and more recently we have become a leading developer and digital publisher.
Through our BiblioLife imprint we publish and curate historical materials in ePub format (we are an approved Apple Aggregator) and multi-media Apps. We also power branded Apps for some of the world’s leading cultural institutions. And in Spring 2012 we will launch BiblioBoard, an eco-system that will change the way academics, amateur researchers, and hobbyists interact with historial materials.
We are a small, powerful company located in an IRS designated Renewal Community in the beautiful, historic city of Charleston, SC. With many team members living within walking or biking distance to our offices overlooking the Cooper River, we are actively engaged in our local community on numerous levels. We are also members of a larger “renewal community” working with companies on every continent to create a global eco-system dedicated to the preservation and distribution of books. We also give back globally and locally via multiple sponsorships and personal engagement in projects that are important to us.
