About
Late Knight Books and Services was established to help bring niche titles to a broader audience. With the advent of online shopping, it has become more difficult to find specialized bookshops for music, science, the humanities, and other interests not catered to in large, corporate bookstores. I hope this will be a location where we can start to build those communities and, one day soon, see a brick-and-mortar store where we can enjoy our niches together!
The Business Model
Large, online bookstores operate by flooding the market with discounts and driving smaller competitors out of business by selling popular books at low costs. I believe this is detrimental to our community bookstores, which are an important third-place for us to gather together. But, these small, independent bookstores don't have the extra funds or retail space to cater to the more niche interests. When I left school, I couldn't find a single place--in person or online--that offered a good selection of advanced music or academic books. So, I founded Late Knight Books to help fill this void.
Late Knight Books is currently a one-man-show, operating out of my apartment near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Sadly, I do not yet have a storefront to welcome customers, but there is a silver lining. Without the overhead cost of renting a storefront, I can offer free shipping and reduced cost on almost every book! The only trade-off is that most books must be special ordered from the publisher. But, I'm hopeful you'll agree that a good discount is worth the extra wait.
What is Print-on-Demand?
If you've ever ordered specialized, niche academic books from publishers like Wiley or Springer Nature, you've probably noticed that it takes way more time for the book to ship than if you order a more popular book. Why is this? Well, the more niche the topic, the less people are interested in buying the book. So, unlike the popular publishers who print large quantities of books and store them in warehouses, academic publishers will wait until the book has been ordered before printing copies. This reduces the storage space needed and prevents printed books from going to waste. The downside is, printing books takes a bit of time, so it takes an extra week or two for the book to be ready. So, if your order takes a few weeks, or is delayed, please know that we are all doing our best to get you your book as effectively as possible!
The Future
I never thought I'd be a business owner. I thought I'd be content to work in a lab for the rest of my career. But the Late Knight kept tapping on my shoulder, saying, You can do better.
With the goal of creating a community space for learning and discussion, plans for a physical storefront are well underway. I have my eyes set on a few different options in Philadelphia and hope to soon be in the right place to put down an offer for a cozy storefront in one of the outer neighborhoods.
Catalog expansions are also underway. Currently, the primary publishers I work with are Wiley and Springer Nature, but I've been building relations with Taylor & Francis and MPS MacMillan, along with others, and hope to have their catalogs integrated into my website soon!
Thank you for your support and interest in this project of mine! I hope to have updates in the near future to share soon.
All the Best,
Andrew