Posts Tagged ‘book publishing’

Pro Blog Index

July 12th, 2010

This is the Index to the fotoLibra Pro Blog postings since January 2010.

If you’re new to fotoLibra, welcome! — and may we suggest you read through the HINTS & TIPS section, and if nothing else read Great Expectations from the 2009 blog. It still holds true.

In fact there are a lot of interesting posts in the 2009 blogs, and you can see an Index to them here.

Comments are welcome, even on old posts, and will be read and often responded to.

HINTS & TIPS

ABOUT FOTOLIBRA

ADOBE

CUSTOMERS

E-BOOKS & PUBLISHING

IT

LAW

MICROSTOCK

MISCELLANY

NETWORKING

PICTURE CALLS

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Here’s an index to the fotoLibra Pro Blog for the whole of 2009.

As I complained 6 months ago, it takes a surprising amount of time to compile, so if there are any WordPress experts out there who know how to automate this process, we’d love to hear from you.

If you’re new to fotoLibra, welcome, and may we suggest you read through the HINTS & TIPS section, and if nothing else read Great Expectations. If you enjoy a bit of controversy, read BAPLA Shock Horror.

Comments are welcome, even on old posts, and will be read and often responded to.

HINTS & TIPS

ABOUT FOTOLIBRA

ADOBE

BAPLA

CUSTOMERS

E-BOOKS & PUBLISHING

IT

LAW


MISCELLANY


NETWORKING

NEWS

PICTURE CALLS

SECURITY

TRADE FAIRS

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Orphan Books

December 23rd, 2009

The New York Times has published its annual list of ‘buzzwords of the year’. Two have been derived from book publishing, in which fotoLibra has a vested interest as publishers constitute our largest single market.

The words are ‘Vook’ and ‘Orphan Books’. ‘Vook’ is a neologism and ‘Orphan Books’ is a phrase rather than a word, but we’ll let that pass. Let’s deal with Vook first: its etymology is a combination of Video and bOOK content, in other words the killer ebook I described in this blog post without using the word vook. More recently, I got rather excited by this ad for Sports Illustrated which pretty accurately delivered what I was looking for in an ebook, only as a magazine. So what would this be? A vazine? Videodical? A Vag (Video mAGazine)?

Anyway, the first time I ever heard the term ‘vook’ was when I read the article this morning. So I’m not aware of it as a buzz word.

Orphan Books are defined by the New York Times as “volumes still in copyright but out of print and unavailable for sale, and whose copyright holders cannot be found.” The article says that the term ‘Orphan Book’ first rose to prominence in 2007, but “peaked this year with the fierce discussion over the proposed Google Books settlement.”

Orphan Book has a completely different meaning for me and many other authors and publishers. The real Orphan Book is one that is orphaned at birth, a tragedy shared with genuine orphans.

When an editor commissions a book and leaves the firm before the book is published, that creates an orphan book. Within a publishing house, the editor’s rôle is to deliver the best product he can, and to do that he has to talk up his babies to publicity, sales, marketing and of course the board. His books are better than the books from the other editors in the house; they are more marketable, better written, more intelligent, bigger sellers, indeed seminal. Few can remain unimpressed at the sight of an editor firing on all 16 cylinders to promote a favoured author or title at a sales conference.

But if that editor is no longer there to defend and promote the title, what happens to the book? I can tell you from bitter experience — it’s forgotten. There’s a contract, so the company is obliged to issue the book, but because no one remaining in the company is interested, it is not so much published as released into the community.

Three of my books were orphan books: Follies: A National Trust Guide: commissioned by Robin Wright (died shortly afterwards) and Liz Calder (left to found Bloomsbury). Eventually published by Jonathan Cape, 1986.

Architectural Follies In America: commissioned by Buckley Jeppson of the Preservation Press. Buckley left, the company was acquired by John Wiley & Son and the book was eventually published by them in 1996.

The Encyclopaedia of Fonts: Commissioned by Jane Ellis. Jane left over a year before a new managing director eventually allowed the book to trickle out in mid-December. Eventually published by Cassell Illustrated, 2005.

So where does the New York Times get Orphan Books from, to mean this quasi-legal grey area? From Google, of course. Google is not a book publisher and does not use a book publishing vocabulary, so it created this term to describe what is in fact a minute sector of the market. How many titles are we talking about in Google’s definition of an ‘orphan book’? How many books are there where the copyright holders cannot be found? Who is looking for them? How hard are they looking?

If I owe somebody money, they always manage to find me. But if money is owed to me, the difficulty of tracking me down becomes exponentially greater. Creating a snappy phrase — even by appropriating one that’s already in use within the trade for a common occurrence — gives visibility to an otherwise overlooked and unimportant sector of the market.

And interestingly it might help to divert attention from much larger, yet less transparent, activities being carried on elsewhere.


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Frankfurt Appointments

September 16th, 2009

I’m booking myself appointments at the Frankfurt Book Fair. I don’t bother with my old pals, because I’ll run into them anyway. I will check with the contacts I already have to see if they’ve got a few spare minutes so we can catch up.

But what I’ll concentrate on is the publishers we don’t already have relationships with; in other words, I’m cold calling.

And a more fatiguing, depressive, unwelcoming task is hard to imagine. There must be some, I suppose.

At least I’m not getting rejected on the phone. I’m emailing these people, and I’m selecting publishers who specialise in illustrated books and who therefore presumably need a good supply of images.

THEN I get rejected. No comprende.

Of course, I get a slew of appointments out of it. Most people are polite and happy to fix a meeting. That’s great. Many simply don’t respond. Fair enough. Some reply and they’re all booked up. Fair enough. Some reply saying they’re the wrong person. Fair enough.

But I am constantly surprised by the steady minority of business people who are shocked and appalled by an unsolicited approach. How dare I contact such important people and suggest they soil their hands by shaking mine? What possible reason would a publisher of illustrated books have for meeting someone from a picture library? What temerity!

These aren’t casual rejections. They’ve often done a little bit of research so they can mention a competitor, or refer to a field in which we have little expertise (increasingly rare nowadays). There is a basic intent to wound.

I don’t know if it makes us less important and them more so. It can’t be that, because it doesn’t work.

Human nature I guess, hitting blindly out at someone unknown, on a par with my impotent raging at voicemail and bank security questions.

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