LA VERGNE, TN – Lightning Source Inc., the leading provider of demand-based book manufacturing and distribution solutions to the book industry, announced today that Lightning Source UK has been awarded a prestigious British Book Industry Award.

Lightning Source UK received the 2007 Nielsen Bookdata Award for Innovation in the Book Industry for the success of Lightning UK’s ground breaking Pilot Large Print Initiative, which makes books available in large print format for the visually impaired. Beginning in November of 2005, Lightning Source UK has been working with the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) to provide large print format books for visually impaired individuals around the world.

"We’re absolutely delighted to win the award for innovation in the book industry," said David Taylor, Senior Vice President of Global Sales for Lightning Source and Managing Director of Lightning Source UK. "This is a great application of print on demand technology, which makes any book available in large print format. Less than 1.5 percent of books published in the UK are currently available in large print. Our unique ability to print a single copy of a book when we get an order allows publishers to make many more titles available in this format with minimal risk and investment. A book can be reformatted into a large print size and the file held in our library until we get an order."

The British Book Industry Awards ceremony was held Tuesday, May 1, in Harrogate, England at a gala dinner at the close of the annual conference of the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland. The British Book Industry Awards are “the Oscars of the book trade”^[1] and also known as the “Nibbies“ – a nickname referring to the prestigious pen-nib shaped awards that are given to the winners.

The Lightning Source large print initiative is the first of its kind in the publishing industry and is supported by the RNIB which campaigns through its Right to Read initiative. The Right to Read initiative states that all books should be made available in accessible formats (braille, daisy audio, large print) for visually impaired readers.