[bksvol-discuss] Re: In response to the publisher books coming in...
- From: "Monica Svopa" <mrod16@xxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:13:55 -0500
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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