Salon profiles two Carolinas booksellers doubling as publishers

Two Carolinas booksellers -- Asheville's Malaprop's Bookstore and Spartanburg, S.C.'s Hub City Books -- are profiled in a new Salon article about independent booksellers getting into the publishing game.

The two bookstores are among what Salon calls "a heartening trend in the brave new world of publishing" -- indie bookstores that are "taking a page from Amazon and producing titles themselves."

Actually, Hub City began as a publisher that expanded into a bookstore.The Spartanburg store grew out of the Hub City Writers Project, launched 15 years ago to support local writers. The press has published about 50 titles.

Malaprop's recently revived Burning Bush Press, its publishing arm, with a soon-to-be-released title, "Naked Came the Leaf Peeper." The serial novel has chapters written by 12 N.C. writers, including Fred Chappell and Tony Early.