Borders is doing a bookseller and book publishing deal with their “personal publishing” program made in conjunction with Xlibris.  They’ll publish, through the Xlibris publishing service, any book written by a customer and they’ll guarantee to put 10 copies of the book on the shelf in that specific Borders bookstore for 60 days.  It’s my understanding that these Borders arranged-for-publishing books are printed without an ISBN and there’s no listing in Books-In- Print nor a bar code.  The Borders/Xlibris connection appears to be focused on books that would have a very minute niche market.

Xlibris has a partnership agreement in place with one of the Random House venture groups providing financing.  Once again, this arrangement doesn’t seem to be producing any benefits to their authors.