Shelf Space - Small press for Atlanta

Frank Reiss has been in the book business for 20 years now, the last 14 spent running A Cappella Books, the off-beat oasis for used and new titles in Little Five Points. But next month Reiss makes the not-unheard-of leap from bookseller to book publisher with the soft launch of Everthemore Books.

The extremely low-volume imprint will focus on bringing out-of-print titles back into circulation, emphasizing (but not limited to) local authors and subject matter.

“It’s a tradition among antiquarian booksellers to print small editions of some books for their clientele,” Reiss says. “I’ve had a handful of titles over the years that I’ve thought I wanted to try and reprint.” Plus, he notes, selling mostly used titles at A Cappella has kept him abreast of the “subterranean demand” for certain hard-to-find books.

Everthemore’s first title, Rodger Lyle Brown’s 1991 Party Out of Bounds, fits perfectly with the publisher’s criteria. It’s an intimate history of the roots of the B-52’s, R.E.M. and the Athens music scene, as reported by a local writer (and former CL editor, to boot).

Party Out of Bounds, originally published by Plume with a print run under 15,000, will have an initial Everthemore print of several hundred copies and will feature a new cover design. The book will be distributed at A Cappella and other Atlanta and Athens bookstores in mid-December.

As for future titles, Reiss isn’t ready to make that public yet.

“I love the idea of eventually putting out a catalog,” he says. “But really I’m viewing this first book as just getting my feet wet.”

Shelf Space is a weekly column on books and Atlanta’s literary scene.