Walt at Random

Maybe I need to learn something from mainstream merchants: That is, the value of constant, repetitive advertising. The total number of sales for all Cites & Insights Books in February 2010 was zero. (Fortunately, the total number of donations for C&I itself was slightly higher, although still in the very low single digits….well, one, actually. For which I’m grateful.)

Or maybe I’m pricing ‘em wrong! After all, Neal-Schuman’s bringing out ten very short books on narrow aspects library technology, each 125 6×9 pages (presumably around 30,000 words, maybe slightly more), each $55. With a big prepub push where you can “buy the whole set for a mere $385!” (And LITA’s the copublisher, a situation I’ve always found interesting…) These could be the best library tech books ever, for all I know (hey, friends & acquaintances wrote half of ‘em, so I’m not saying anything negative), but it makes the prices for my books seem sort of tawdry by comparison…

Anyway:

Great Bargains on Essential Books

Some of you may have missed this, but I reduced the prices of most Cites & Insights Books (which may be exactly the wrong thing to do, but):

• Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change is now $25 paperback, $16 PDF download. (And with a dozen more copies, I’ll reach my “success” criterion: 300 copies sold.)
• The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look is also now $25 paperback, $16 PDF download. (Sixty-two copies to date, but who’s counting?)
• I believe every library school should have print copies of Cites & Insights, and that’s easier than ever for the last four volumes–with great full-color photos thrown in for good measure. Volume 6, 2006; Volume 7, 2007; Volume 8, 2008; and Volume 9, 2009 are now just $35 paperback (and when you consider the sheer size of these volumes, “just” is the right word), $25 PDF download (of course, you can download the issues for free–but $20 of that $25 counts as a direct contribution to keep C&I going).

Essential Books

I believe Balanced Libraries is still an essential book–and, if you care about blogging, so are The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008: A Lateral Look and, particularly, my latest: But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009. That one goes for a mere $35 paperback, $25 PDF. (So far, it’s a very limited edition, with a baker’s dozen sold.)

Hmm: Maybe that’s the trick: Charge $395 for each book–what you typically pay for Studies, where “you” may not include any W.a.R. readers–or charge $75 and make each one a Limited Edition, taking them offsale after, say, 100 copies are sold.

(Note: The two library blog books weren’t taken offsale for “limited edition” reasons but out of a sense of futility–the sense that people really don’t want to hear anything but unicorns & rainbows regarding how library blogs actually pan out. That’s a topic for another post that I don’t plan to write.)

Supporting Cites & Insights

I had modest sponsorship for Cites & Insights from 2005 through 2009. I don’t now. I’d love to have a sponsor, but I’m admittedly not out beating the bushes of nonexistent contacts to raise one.

Meanwhile, if you find C&I valuable, you can help keep it going by contributing directly. You’ll find the information and the PayPal “Donate” button right there on the C&I home page, just below the contents list for the current issue.

I will note that, if I had $1 for every downloaded/opened copy of Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0,” that would cover sponsorship-equivalent for the next seven years But then, if wishes were horses, we’d be up to our ears in…well, never mind.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 12:58 pm and is filed under C&I Books, Cites & Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.