Under the corporate foliage of mainstream book publishing, independent seedlings are flourishing. Reprinting the bestsellers (or even the not-quite-best sellers) of the past can be not only modestly lucrative but there is an appetite for books that feel like books, that offer an old-fashioned, material, reader experience.
Think of delicious Slightly Foxed limited edition clothbound hardbacks with gold blocking and a ribbon bookmark; or the lovely reproductions of period textiles on the endpapers of a Persephone volume. The plots of the) may not, in the age of Netflix, pack the thrills they once did but their retro covers are irresistible.
