Publishing Talks Interview with Lauren Woods of LitBox

August 20, 2025 by David
Filed under PublishingTalks, Technology

Publishing Talks started as a series of conversations with book industry professionals and others involved in media and technology, mostly talking about the future of publishing, books, and culture. It was great fun talking with people in the book industry about the evolution of publishing in the context of technology, culture, and economics. In the past few years, I’ve talked with a variety of editors, publishers and others who have been innovators and leaders in independent publishing and bookselling in the past and into the present. These conversations have been inspirational to me. I have had the pleasure of speaking with visionaries and entrepreneurs, editors, publishers and others who have influenced and changed contemporary literature and culture. I’ve also had the opportunity to speak with a number of friends and colleagues in the book business.

I really enjoy the opportunities to find out about the boundless creativity that motivates so many of us in the book business. When I read about Lauren Wood and her cool new project, Litbox, a book vending machine in Washington, DC, I had to reach out to her to find out more about it. Lauren’s goal was to create an innovative way to promote local readership with local authors, something that writers always feel strongly about. Even the best independent bookstores do not focus as much attention on local authors as most of us wish they would. “I want to give writers and people in this town something to feel excited about,” she says. “I wanted to bring a little bit of optimism into an otherwise bleak moment….Great literature is really about empathy and kind of deeply getting outside of your own framework and inhabiting another person’s consciousness.”

LitBox launched in May, 2025. Lauren made it work with a Kickstarter campaign that raised seed capital of $5000.

Almost everyone in the book business recognizes how challenging it is to connect books with readers in our media’s overwhelmingly saturated information deluge. Any project that can connect writers and books to readers in a personalized, area-specific way is worthy of our support. I am hopeful that Litbox will not be a one-off, and could inspire others to try out the idea. It seems to have worked successfully in England, where there are book vending machines in subway stations and many other locales.

If you’re in the DC area, look for a Litbox and try it out. It’s in the Western Market.

And here’s a good local story about the Litbox launch on the “Inchy’s Bookworm Vending Machine” website. It looks like they are encouraging others to use their machine wherever books could be sold by machine. I hope this idea catches on!