[bksvol-discuss] Re: Question about publishers--clarification, please--long

  • From: Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>
  • To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2012 20:16:12 -0400

There are no publishers that are off limits. The concept of safe and unsafe publishers came about this way. There were a number of volunteers who were upset about the books they had worked on being replaced by publisher quality books. It is part of the agreement with the publishers that when the publisher contributes a book that it be the only copy on the site. Some volunteers felt like their work was for nothing if it was going to be replaced. Then Jamie in Michigan started compiling a list of "safe" publishers. Those were publishers which had not signed an agreement with Bookshare and so would likely not be replacing volunteer contributed copies. That list was later combined with a list of publishers that had signed the agreement and there was a list of "safe" and "unsafe" publishers. That list was rather unwieldy. There are so many publishers in the world that we really have no way to even count them all and certainly no way to track them all down to put on a list. It makes a lot more sense to just have a list of publishers that have signed the agreement and then we can assume that any publisher that is not on that list is a "safe" one. Even the so-called safe ones are not necessarily permanently safe though. We never know when a publisher might sign the Bookshare agreement. The so-called unsafe ones might really be safe for some of their titles too. The publishers are completely in control of which titles they submit to Bookshare and they may not submit each and every title that they have. In fact, they probably will not. Many of their titles have been out of print for a long time and do not exist in electronic form. The point is that you may submit any book published by any publisher. If it is one of the publishers that are submitting their own titles then there is a good chance that your submission is going to be replaced. If that bothers you then you may consider such a publisher to be unsafe. Harlequin would be an example of such a so-called unsafe publisher because they do submit their own titles. If you submit a Harlequin title yourself it may not be replaced, but there is a good chance that it will. There is a link on the Bookshare site to a list of publishers that are cooperating with Bookshare and are considered to be unsafe if you are bothered with having your work replaced, but that list does not also list their imprints. We need a list of imprints because without it we may not recognize a publisher as one of those that contributes to Bookshare. If it bothers you to have one of your own submissions replaced and the apparent publisher of the book you are contemplating submitting is not on that list of publishers you might want to google phrases like "blank is an imprint of" or other similar phrases where the publisher you are looking at fills in the blank. Remember, though, you are not prohibited from submitting any book because of the publisher.

On 8/24/2012 7:45 PM, Dornetta wrote:
Blank
Hello guys;
I have a question about publishers. I know that there are some publishers who do not submit to bookshare as well as some who do. The publisher's who do not submit to bookshare are off limit, right. I know that there are some publishers who are "safe" and submit like Simon & Shooster (yes, it is spelled incorrectly but hopefully you get the pic.) and other like Peirson who has loads of imprints for which we can scan. But my question is this...the publishers who are unsafe should NOT be scanned, right? The whole list of unsafe, safe, etc... is sort of confusing. (It could just be that I am overthinking the list but confused none-the-less) I am asking because Harlequin-Kimani Romance is on the list as unsafe or something like forbidden but there are several Kamini Harlequin titles in the collection (Brenda Jackson has plenty in the collection.) And then there are others like Francis who also has Kimani titles that are not in the collection as well as her St. Martin's Press titles. This is confusion because I am HUGE fan of Francis Ray and have considered scanning a series of hers that I have not had the opportunity to read because it is not accessible and would like to add it if I do scan it. Will someone please clarify and sorry for the long email but trying to unscramble this is giving me a headache!
Thanks family,
Netta
"Just because you are blind does not mean you lack vision"-Stevie Wonder


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