Spinner Publications Goes Digital

PHOTO: Spinner staff members Zachary White (left) and Jay Avila (right) are at work in the Spinner Vault putting together digital books from Spinner classics.

In an exciting and long-awaited development, Spinner Publications is digitizing its large-format, coffee-table-sized books known for their photography and colorful design. Readers will now be able to enjoy the incredible photographs and stories of even Spinner’s hard-to-find and out-of-print favorites such as its award-winning titles Lincoln Park Remembered, Cranberry Harvest: A History of Cranberry Growing in Massachusetts, and A Window Back: Photography in a Whaling Port.

Spinner Publications, the New Bedford-based publishing house known for keeping the present in touch with the past through its historic photographs and books about the history and culture of southeastern Massachusetts, is converting all of its 40-plus titles to digital format. Using a mobile device, tablet or laptop, readers can bring Spinner books into the classroom, to the beach, or on a trip to Costa Rica.

“We’re thrilled to be able to offer history to our readers in a variety of formats without compromising design and photography,” said Spinner Publisher Joseph Thomas. “It makes sense for us to embrace the technology of today and tomorrow, even though we’re all about preserving the past.”

New technology available to readers and publishers, such as the improved-quality of Kindle ebooks from Amazon and the availability of Apple’s proprietary digital “ibooks” on iTunes, allows for Spinner to launch its new eBook library.

The work of preparing and redesigning Spinner books for digital format is in the hands of Staff Designer Zachary White. “I’ve tried to maintain the integrity of the design and the impact of the photos to give readers a true reflection of the original work,” White said.

As electronic books, these early, hard-to-find Spinner titles—such as A Picture History of Fairhaven and Portuguese Spinner: An American Story—will be available at affordable prices. For example, instead of paying hundreds of dollars, readers can now purchase the complete five-volume series of Spinner’s flagship anthology, Spinner: People and Culture in Southeastern Massachusetts, for about $10 per book. Trade paperbacks such as Losing Jonathan, Brick by Brick, The Strike of ’28 and Drifting Toward the Southeast are now or will soon be available for download from both Amazon Kindle and Apple iTunes.

In addition to establishing an e-library stocked with titles, Spinner will also expand its catalog of online photographs now viewable on Flickr.com . The Spinner Collection holds more than one million historic photographs of southeastern Massachusetts and beyond—20,000 of which can be viewed on Flickr.com . “It’s exciting for us to be able to share much of our wonderful collection with the public for research or for display purposes,” says Archivist and Associate Publisher Jay Avila. “I try to help people find images of places, events and people that are meaningful to them.”

For more information, contact Susan Grace at (508) 994-4564, email sgrace@spinnerpub.com , visit Spinner online at www.spinnerpub.com , check out Spinner Publications on Facebook, or follow @spinner_publications on Instagram.