Baking books in Parkdale

Baking books in Parkdale. Derek McCormack, pictured here, runs the Book Bakery in Parkdale along with Alana Wilcox and Michael Maranda. The Book Bakery is properly known as Publication Studio Toronto, an outpost of the original Publication Studio in Portland, Oregon. Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD

The Book Bakery, housed in a small corner of the basement of Capital Espresso on Queen Street West, is properly known as Publication Studio Toronto, an outpost of the original Publication Studio in Portland, Oregon.

Run by Derek McCormack, Alana Wilcox and Michael Maranda, the Book Bakery produces special book projects by artists and writers and publishes them in limited edition, print-on-demand runs.

"We call it an instillation art piece because we are not publishing in any usual way. We are not taking submissions, we are not distributing, we are not promoting," McCormack said. "My goal is just to make really nice things and have people buy them."

McCormack, a writer and an 18-year veteran bookseller in Toronto, was on a reading tour with his last novel, The Show That Smells (2008), when he stayed with a friend and fellow writer Matthew Stadler in Portland, Oregon.

Stadler had started the original publication studio there and the prospect of starting a Toronto offshoot got McCormack's gears turning.

"When I came back I was very excited about the prospect because friends of his had been opening other ones around."

McCormack, who lives in the Annex, approached Wilcox, who said she was excited about the idea as well. Marandas, who had run his own press for years, also got on board.

Despite the seeming trend toward e-publishing, the trio decided to launch an old-fashion publishing studio for physical books.

"No one has ever thought that this setup was going to be the future of how books are made or how books are distributed, but all that seems in flux," McCormack said. "This seemed like a project that would at least try out different angles for making it sustainable and maybe be really fun in the process."

As a writer, McCormack said it doesn't matter to him if there is a physical book or not as long as he can write and get published. But as a reader, books are something he can't give up.

"There are so many things that go into a physical book, one is the tactile which people love," he said. "And it is still in our culture confers status, that if you have a physical book it means you have made it or you have arrived or it is actual."

Also as a bookseller, McCormack said you cannot over estimate the importance of books as gifts.

"People from all income levels, all ages and all walks of life, they are things that get passed around and they are important in that way to be inscribed, to be handed down," he said.

The studio didn't cost a lot to set up, McCormack said.

There are a couple of photocopiers, a contraption for cutting the pages and a binder where the Bakery team prints, trims and binds the books.

"It takes about a hour to get one book done," McCormack said.

The Book Bakery is working with a number of visual artists and McCormick said they are going to focus much of their publishing on art books.

"The artists are going to come in here and they are going to make it and you are going to be able to buy something they helped produce in a limited number," McCormick said. "To me that is really exciting."

The trio set up shop in February and produced their first book in June.

They have published three books so far: Selected Business Correspondence by Andrew Kaufman, Why We Fight by Pasha Malla and It Must Be As Tall As a Lighthouse by Tabatha Southey and Will Alsop.

The Book Bakery has more art books lined up as well as some fiction, mainly by authors and artists from the Parkdale and West Queen West area. McCormack said their hope is to publish 25 titles in the first year.

"What our plan always was is after a year or a year and a half to see how it is going, how we were selling and if we have the means to open it up to people submitting stuff," McCormack said.