Publishers Weekly recently broke the news that HarperCollins will drop its traditional bound catalog and go digital. For fall 2009, HC will produce a digital catalog with the standard information, plus “reviews, interviews and promotional videos.” Unlike a paper catalog, this digital one won’t be stagnant. The online catalogs will be “updated frequently, reflecting any evolving changes with the publication details or marketing efforts surrounding titles. The digital catalogues will also feature access to authors' backlists and, on select titles, link to browsable galleys. The search functionality will allow users to create lists of titles based on categories like genre, format and on-sale date.”
HarperCollins is not the first publisher to go green, though. In 2007, Clarkson Potter, a Random House imprint, started using e-galleys. At that time, Publishers Weekly reported concerns about the security of electronic files. Those concerns have lessened, but not disappeared. There were also concerns about getting reviewers to read digital files.
Mary Kate Maco, head of publicity at Harvard University Press, wanted to invest in e-galleys until she heard what review editors had to say on the subject. Maco had her marketing staff contact book review editors at PW, the New Yorker, the New York Times and other publications, and all the respondents said they wouldn't accept electronic editions for review. Other publicity directors, many at Random House, agreed that press folk still want bound galleys. “At the moment, I think the world at large is not ready [for e-galleys],” said Knopf publicity director Nicholas Latimer.While a lot of the print reviewers are still reluctant to embrace ebooks, other reviewers are not. And now HarperCollins is testing the waters to see how many booksellers are willing to browse online digital catalogs.
Catalogs and such should be both electronic and print. Sometimes it's easier to carry a print item to look over than a computer, and vice versa. Depends where you are or what you're doing.
ReplyDeleteMorgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
Get this - the Detroit Free Press is shutting down its printed paper department. All future Det News will be delivered electronically.
ReplyDeleteI think it's only a matter of time before all catelogues and review copies go digital. While this will reduce waste, it will also reduce revenue and jobs due to less printing. It all comes with a price.
ReplyDeleteL. Diane Wolfe
www.circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com
www.spunkonastick.net
www.thecircleoffriends.net
I hear you Morgan. It is sometimes easier to carry a print copy, but I have to admit, I'm seriously thinking of getting an e-reader or an iPhone. I think of all the time I waste in waiting rooms, when I could be reading or perhaps even editing a client's manuscript. I still love print books and will always read them, as long as they're printed, but I'm more and more going digital.
ReplyDeleteNewspapers are really hurting, Marvin. Too many people get their news online via the online copy of the paper or through Twitter or whatever. I have to admit, the only time I look at a print newspaper is when DH comes home from a trip with the free hotel copies of USA Today.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Diane. It does take away jobs. Or maybe it shifts jobs. They lose people who do the printing, but gain employees who do the online work. What I found interesting about this article was that the new digital catalogs can contain trailers and other things you can't do with paper.
ReplyDeleteDoes everyone remember the scene in the original Rollerball where all the books have been rendered into one central computer. James Caan goes to get info about the world before the corporations took over and the head librarian is kicking the machine because it just perversely lost all of the 14th century? Books have the advantage of multiple redundancy. Scholars just discovered a lost text of Archimedes that may imply that he was aware of some elements of the calculus. It was the original text beneath a medieval palimpsest prayer book. Imagine the damage to our culture that would result from a massive EMP bomb, if key works existed only in the electronic realm. Imagine if we archived all our knowledge and literature on laser disc technology and then at some future date our descendants have to claw their way out of a dark age--would we want them to have to reinvent laser technology before they could read our texts? It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. If the Arabs had not preserved the ancient Greek texts, Western civilization would never have been able to claw their way out of the Dark Ages, at least not with the explosion of ideas that was the Renaissance. Of course the Twentieth Century is an anomaly. So much of our literature was printed on high-acid-content paper--it is literally burning at a very slow but inexorable rate. Chunks of our literary legacy are already lost. All the books I bought when I was a kid are fragile brown shells of their former selves that crumble at an indelicate touch. If they are not preserved digitally and soon, they will be lost way before literary archaeologists need them.
ReplyDeleteMark
I agree with Mark in that the orginals will eventually be lost to time and wear, and I applaud Harper Collins for dipping its toes into the digital waters.
ReplyDeleteJean
http://mysteriouspeople.blogspot.com/
I think digital is the wave of the future and there is a lot of versatility to the format. I wouldn’t want to lose paper books in favor of it, but I do like to see everything with a click of a button.
ReplyDeleteJobs are always changing and evolving. Many companies offer opportunities to learn new ways to their long time employees. Smart companies offer educational components for their employees.
I have to admit I read the news online. My husband watches the sports online and reads the various articles on the subject, although he still reads the newspaper from front to back. Lord help us if anything happens to the internet, lol!
But I like the idea of seeing titles, blurbs and trailers for current books. And with so many other aspects of the publishing field being digital, why not e-galleys?
Enjoyed your article, Helen.
I am happy enough to receive digital copies to review, as long as the sender is aware that if it doesn't grip me instantly it will languish on my hard drive for eternity. I simply prefer to read hard copy. I am one of those people who can't pick up a typo in a letter i've written until i print it off.
ReplyDeleteFor reading for pleasure, I still prefer print over computer. But I don't have an e-reader, so I can't really compare the two. For editing, I prefer the computer since it's so easy to make changes and leave comments. I don't think paper will cease to exist, at least in my lifetime. But it would be smart to have copies of text in print, digitally, and in some other form, just for history's sake.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this, I kept thinking of all those scribes in the monasteries and royal courts, tearing their hair out and predicting doom when the printing press first showed what it could do. Revolutions are always painful, even when necessary.
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ReplyDeleteAnd to think of all the naysayers who claimed ebooks would fizzle and die.
ReplyDeletePeople fear "green" costing jobs, but consider that jobs driving consumerism is costing us a good deal more. In any case, jobs lost to eco-friendly practices will naturally shift to where the demand will go--green products and technologies.
--Lisa
http://authorlsalogan.blogspot.com
I'm not so much worried about losing print books or of digital books becoming more popular than print books, but of digital books being too easy to replicate and copy and authors losing their copyrights and income from their works.
ReplyDeleteI like that they can keep udating their catalogue this way.
ReplyDeleteLynnette Labelle
http://lynnettelabelle.blogspot.com
The world is changing and I think it's fantastic that a major company is taking this leap into the digital world. As you mentioned in comments, there is potential for this to be scary, for authors to lose out, reproductions to be pirated, but I think those are kinks that will eventually be worked out as we adapt to this new media creative world. Exciting and scary--I look forward to it.
ReplyDeleteJenny
http://theinnerbean.blogspot.com
For pleasure reading, I'll admit that I prefer reading paper to digital. It's easier on my old eyes! However, I'm in favor of reducing paper waste, too. It's something many industries have been working toward for years (some for decades) mainly for cost reasons.
ReplyDeleteComing from a city who's economy used to rely heavily on the steel industry, but is thriving even in this economic climate, I can attest to the fact that while jobs will be lost, new technology can create new opportunities.
I agree, Queeenofmean. And digital catalogs sounds like a great idea. Don't know if booksellers will like it, though.
ReplyDeleteThere are some definite advantages and disadvantages, but I think more and more we'll be changing to electronic with less paper options on anything. I get headaches reading much on a computer screen, so it will probably cause me to read less. Thanks for sharing this, Helen!
ReplyDeleteI read so much on the computer screen, too, that I'm not looking forward to more. That's why I'm wondering if reading on the Kindle or an iPhone would be better. You could sit somewhere other than the desk chair and hold the e-reader like a regular book. But I've had no experience with either.
ReplyDeleteHi Helen,
ReplyDeleteThis is great news! I've found that a lot of reviewers still won't review ebooks. Which is a great pity for those of us who have only released our books in an ebook format.
E-readers are wonderful and in most cases it's better than reading a normal book.
Joan De La Haye
http://joandelahaye.wordpress.com/