Epicenter Hustles to Meet Demand for Palin Bio

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 8/29/2008 9:41:00 AM

John McCain surprised most when he chose Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be his running mate—and the only book available on Palin is, unsurprisingly, from an equally dark horse publisher: Epicenter Press, which has its primary office in Kenmore, Wash., and publishes books about Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Epicenter published Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down by Kaylene Johnson in April as a $19.95 hardcover featuring 50 photographs.

Publisher Kent Sturgis said the book had been doing well before the announcement; Epicenter went through its 7,000-copy first printing in less than a month, and then reprinted 3,000 more copies, which were all shipped by early Friday. "I walked in the door [Friday] morning and the first call was from Barnes & Noble; they wanted 15,000 copies," Sturgis said. "I’ve got an e-mail queue here that’s longer than I can see."

To meet demand, the press began working with Lightning Source over the weekend and the print-on-demand printer has produced 30,000 copies of the trade paperback edition so far--the first of which are now being shipped--and Epicenter ordered another 10,000 copies Monday morning. "The whole company has been galvanized by this," said  Ingram Lightning Group CEO Skip Prichard. Epicenter has a close relationship with Lightning parent Ingram since Epicenter's titles are distributed by Graphic Arts, whose titles are distributed by Ingram Publisher Services. Even as the first copies ship, Lightning is continuing to print more copies. "We are having meetings throughout the day to gauge demand," said Prichard. 

Lightning performed a similar service for PublicAffairs when its book by Scott McClellan, What Happened, became a surprise hit, and the company produced 7,000 hardcover editions of the title.