The B word

[Robert De Lossa]

Dear SEELANZHANE:

I cannot but feel ambivalent about book announcements on the
news/discussion groups--there is too much to wade through as is. However,
as someone responsible for publishing several academic series, I would
object strongly to a move to censor incoming ads from university or trade
publishers. I do not think there is any good rationale for it. Certainly,
larger presses have their catalogues and stronger marketing departments;
but anyone with an ISBN that establishes an exclusivity arrangement for
American distribution with an American-based office can be included in FB
and BIP--East European publishers should be aware of this and should be
making use of it to reach bibliographers, just as larger presses do. For
foreign publishers distributing themselves (samposlat?) SEELANGS makes a
difference, but then the cutoff logically would be: ads only from
publishers with no physical presence in the U.S. This would be a ludicrous
guideline from the pt. of view of info provision and serve no one well.

The bottom line for a specialty title is just as crucial for larger
publishers as it is for small publishers. SEELANGS would do itself and the
field a discourtesy by disallowing university/trade presses from future
announcements--there are enough disincentives for major presses to pick up
specialty titles (which 95% of Slavic studies titles are considered to be
by people watching the bottom line) as is. If you care about, e.g., the
Czech avant-garde you should hope that the title from Oxford University
Press or Norton sells as well and as quickly as possible, otherwise
something in that field is likely not to be picked up by them again.
Besides, where do you draw the line over ads? Our Institute's various
series (Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, Harv. Libr. of Early Ukr.
Lit., Harv. Papers in Ukr. Studies, Ottomon Docs. Pertaining to Ukr. and
the Black Sea Countries) are distributed by Harvard University Press, but
are put out by what is in essence a micro-press on a shoestring budget. The
reality at other major presses is often the same, even if the situation is
one of a press-internal series vs. a distributed arrangement. The trade
presses are different, but the number of titles overall is less.

As presses become more 'net savvy, they will seek more and more to address
their potential audience directly and cheaply. SEELANGS, from the
perspective of a marketer, is a perfect forum for making initial contact to
a desireable audience, but not for making the sale. By and large, it takes
formatted descriptive text and graphics to do that. For this reason most
major publishers have set up Web sites for browsing. What most publishers
with Web sites will want is for you to know to point to them in your
browser/client to see what's up. Heavy text by Email is redundant and
possibly counterproductive for their purposes.

If announcements come on-line to SEELANGS I agree more with David
Birnbaum's suggestion: short, simple announcements pointing to Web or
gopher sites (or Email address for reply), with a good subject line that
allows immediate trashing if the message isn't something you're interested
in. Publishers who have not already done so should be investing in Web or
gopher sites if they want to use the Internet. (Nothing is for free.) Those
who are serious about getting info on-line should learn to use Web or
gopher clients to access it.

Other solutions might include allowing only reviews (not
publisher-originated ads) into SEELANGS or establishing another listserve
to deal with SEELANGS-related books and other products (important software
packages, translators, travel programs, etc.). People who are not
interested in such things could then simply not subscribe to it. I don't
know what CUNY would think, though.

One final note. I think the greatest irony here is that the argument
centers around a book ad, while at the same time there seems to have been
no comment about the various postings about new services offered by Web
sites that have come on during the same period. Web services are extremely
important, but ultimately you simply are accessing a "book+," a book that
can give you multimedia or a book that tells your computer how to deal with
KOII8. However, inasmuch as we all pay for our access to the Web (or our
sponsoring institutions do) and ultimately Web site provision is not free
(someone pays for the server and connections), this is a commercial
venture, too--Web sites all are vying for greater numbers of "hits" as a
way of justifying the funding put into them. It is a disservice to the
printed book to get huffy about book ads just because they are funded,
described, and accessed the old-fashioned way. When someone gets tenure on
the basis of his or her home page I'll change my mind, but until then. . .

IMO, Robert De Lossa

____________________________________________________
Tchu, titko, tchu. . .
Robert De Lossa
Managing Editor, Harvard Series/Papers in Ukrainian Studies
Publications Office
Ukrainian Research Institute
Harvard University
1583 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
617-496-8768 tel. 617-495-8097 fax.
"rdelossa at fas.harvard.edu"