After 33 years in the music business, Rounder Records in Cambridge, Mass., one of the largest independent labels in the country, is adding a book program. "Book publishing is something we talked about from the very beginning," said Bill Nowlin, who cofounded Rounder Records with Ken Irwin and Marian Leighton-Levy in 1970: all three remain active in the business.

For Nowlin, who has written six books and over 100 articles about the Boston Red Sox, creating a Rounder Books division offers more than just an outlet for his own work, which will have significant play on early lists. Rounder Books' first list, which will launch in May, includes his biography of Johnny Pesky, Mr. Red Sox—The Johnny Pesky Story, with a foreword by Ted Williams; The Fenway Project, a collection of essays by fans, edited by Nowlin and Cecelia Tan; and a photo-portrait of Rush drummer Neil Peart, Rhythm and Light, by Carrie Nuttall. As the preeminent record label in bluegrass—Rounder also has strong blues, reggae, jazz and other roots music lines—Nowlin plans to publish books in that area in the near future. The publishing program's focus, he said, "will be popular culture in general. Each year we'll probably have between four and seven books."

So far Rounder has found the transition to book publishing an easy move. "The two industries are reasonably alike," Nowlin told PW. "We have an overlap of customers—Borders, Amazon and Barnes & Noble; the royalty structures are the same; and it's the same way with the record business, 100% right of return." Nowlin is also counting on synergies between the two divisions. He plans to release book and CD combinations, packaged separately but promoted together. The staff is already in place, too; people in production, marketing and art will work on both book and record projects.

National Book Network will represent Rounder Books to the book trade starting in January; the company, however, will handle its own sales to music stores and souvenir shops that don't have NBN accounts. Rounder Records is distributed by Universal.