That's all very helpful to know. I'm glad the volunteer copies still exist and that someone is working to get the publishers to accept alternatives to what they provide.
Misha On 7/27/2010 9:59 AM, Carrie Karnos wrote:
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these days, we can restore the better copies!In case anyone is wondering, we still have all of the books that have been withdrawn since the new site went live in January of last year. We don't have the withdrawn books from before then.Hope this helps explain what's going on!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
