[bksvol-discuss] Re: In response to the publisher books coming in...

Hi Monica,

Yes, there's a reason. Every publisher that has signed a contract with us has 
insisted on their copies being the only ones available. We are in the midst of 
talking to the publishers and explaining that we add value to their books, 
especially image descriptions inside kiddie books, and if we are allowed to 
keep 
our better versions of their books, we would be happy to send them those better 
copies of their books. Makes sense to me! Hopefully one of these days, we can 
restore the better copies!

In case anyone is wondering, we still have all of the books that have been 
withdrawn since the new site went live in January of last year. We don't have 
the withdrawn books from before then.

Hope this helps explain what's going on! Carrie




________________________________
From: Monica Svopa <mrod16@xxxxxxx>
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tue, July 27, 2010 9:13:55 AM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: In response to the publisher books coming in...

 
Hi Carrie.  Is there a reason why there can't be 2 versions of the books on the 
bookshare site; one from the publisher and one from the volunteers that take 
such time to scan and proof read them?  

 
Monica S
 
 
From:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carrie Karnos
Sent: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 10:36 AM
To: Bookshare Vol Group
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] In response to the publisher books coming in...
 
FYI, there are a number of publishers who are not planning on sending us any 
books. Scholastic, which publishes only kiddie books, has told us that they 
won't be sending us books, but if we put a Scholastic book in the collection, 
we 
can give it worldwide permissions, meaning any Bookshare member around the 
world 
can download it.

Other publishers who won't be sending us books any time soon are: Penguin; 
Farrar, Straus & Giroux; Henry Holt; W.W. Norton; Candlewick; Mira; Houghton 
Mifflin; religious publishers; St. Martins; Grove Press; Disney; the houses 
that 
publish only porn; and most of the small houses. We are talking to a lot of 
these publishing houses (not the porn ones!), but so far, no contracts have 
been 
signed. It takes a long while to negotiate and work through issues with them.

The major houses who are pouring in hundreds of books each day are Hachette; 
Random House; Simon & Schuster; and O'Reilly. HarperCollins is going to start 
this week or next, I believe. Harlequin is going to start sending us books next 
month. I don't know if Engineering has written a conversion program for 
Harlequin's books yet, but the others are done.

There are two gotchas about the publishers listed above in both categories 
(giving and non-giving).

Gotcha #1:
Most of the major publishing houses have subsidiary publishing houses, called 
imprints. Bantam, Dell, Doubleday, Baen and Ace are all imprints of Random 
House, for example. The imprints all follow the lead of their publisher, so if 
you find that a publisher is owned by another publishing company, you can use 
the owner publishing company's status to determine the imprint's status (giving 
or non-giving).

I have a list of imprints under the major houses that are giving us books. 
Would 
any of the gang like me to post the list of imprints so everyone knows which 
publishers and imprints to avoid?

Gotcha #2:
The publishers giving us books are first digitizing their most recent books, 
since obviously they are selling digital copies of them. I assumed that the 
publishers would be working backwards, first digitizing their 2010 books, then 
digitizing the 2009 books, their 2008 books, then 2007 books. Nope! Our digital 
content person said she can't figure out the order in which they are digitizing 
books. So I said, maybe they're digitizing their books in order of popularity, 
digitizing the most popular books first, and not bothering with books that no 
one buys. Nope! I'm 0 for 2 in guessing which books publishers are digitizing. 
There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason which books they are digitizing 
and 
then giving us. I would love to be able to say avoid ALL books from publisher 
X, 
but I can't. I have no idea which books they will be sending us and which would 
be wonderful for a volunteer to scan.

I realize that a lot of you are frustrated by this situation, but so am I. I 
buy 
bestsellers, knowing that in a couple of weeks, the book that I will work so 
hard on is going to be replaced by a publisher copy. And yes, I've had dozens 
and dozens of my previous books withdrawn. I see my name a lot on the list of 
withdrawn books, really I do. I don't know what the solution is, short of 
posting the list of publishers and imprints to avoid.

Carrie

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