After reading the article it’s not as great as I was hoping for. From the article:
“We’re obviously going to be interested in having the books sell as successfully as possible, but we’re not going to harm the fundamental mission of the library to provide free and easy access to the content on our shelves. We’re not going to sacrifice that mission. Just because we’re operating Angel City Press, we’re not going to buy 500 copies of every title and put them in every branch library. That’s not prudent. That’s not what a good library would do.”
So it’s still a profit-driven press. This is a conflict of interest but the library seems confident they can negoiate that fairly.
I was hoping the press would become non-profit and then be used to print and distribute creative commons licensed content. I have a friend (who shall remain unnamed but who is well known) who would like to release their work into the commons and give up all rights apart from attribution. In principle a library-owned press would seem ideal. But I guess this is not the right tool for the job. It also seems the books this press will print are LA-specific anyway.