In a couple of recent posts I’ve talked about the likelihood that some Cites & Insights Books would go away if there wasn’t some sign of sales activity. This post (a version of which will appear in the October 2013 Cites & Insights) provides the details on what I’m planning. In most cases, I suspect the appropriate response will be “didn’t that disappear long ago?”–but if there are people or libraries who want to complete their collection, this post should be useful and, I hope, timely.
Why weed? After all, it’s a virtual bookstore–there’s no limit to how many books I can have available for sale. Because it’s clumsy to track a large number of editions, all the more so since Lulu started listing ebook and print editions entirely separately, rather than clustering them into a single page.
Books that will probably disappear when I turn 68 (mid-September 2013) or thereabouts
- Give Us a Dollar: Oregon and Washington Libraries, free PDF ebook
- Give Us a Dollar: Oregon and Washington Libraries, $34.99 hardcover with color printing
While this book didn’t appear until April 2013, it was always intended to be a limited run. I see that three people or libraries took advantage of my earlier notice and downloaded the free ebook. The hardcover is pretty nice–it’s relatively expensive because it has color printing and it’s a hardcover–but a luxury. Both will disappear in the second half of September 2013–unless I start seeing sales. If I do see sales (of the hardcover), they’ll stick around as long as there’s at least one sale a month. I regard this as unlikely.
Books that could disappear as early as October 1, 2013
- The Liblog Landscape 2007-2010, $18.99 paperback
- The Liblog Landscape 2007-2010, $9.99 PDF ebook
- But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, $20.99 paperback
- But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009, $9.99 PDF ebook
None of these have any 2013 sales. If there are sales of either pair between now and September 30, 2013, I’ll keep that pair (paperback and ebook) around for as long as there’s at least one sale every two months. If not, they’re gone. (I think these are the “Are those moldy oldies still available?” category. The reason they’re both available is because But Still They Blog offers more detail on individual liblogs, albeit on a much smaller set of liblogs.)
Books that could disappear as early as November 1, 2013
- Open Access and Libraries: A Cites & Insights Reader, $17.50 paperback
- Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change, $19.99 paperback
- Balanced Libraries: Thoughts on Continuity and Change, $9.99 PDF ebook
- Library 2.0: A Cites & Insights Reader, $18.99 paperback
- Library 2.0: A Cites & Insights Reader, $5.99 PDF ebook
- Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13), $28.99 hardcover
- Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four (2012-13), $19.99 paperback
- The Compleat Give Us a Dollar, vol. 2: Libraries by State, $9.99 PDF ebook
- The Compleat Give Us a Dollar, vol. 2: Libraries by State, site license version, $34.99 PDF ebook
I’ve been tracking both C&I readers together. There were July sales for all of these but the last two (yes, including Balanced Libraries), so I’ll start the “at least one sale every two months” with the September-October period.
I plan to leave the free PDF ebook version of Open Access and Libraries available until ALA Editions tells me that Open Access: What You Need to Know Now is out of print or until I replace it (if I do!) with an updated version, whichever comes first.
While The Compleat… is almost brand new, it’s entirely duplicative of the last part of The inCompleat Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four, so unless there’s early indication of interest, I’ll just dump it. I think the print form is a better way to do state-to-state comparisons anyway.
No current plans to terminate
I’m keeping the C&I annuals around, at least for the moment–despite disappointing sales, they’re great ways to go back to earlier C&I issues (and they include annual indexes).
The Big Deal and the Damage Done (available as $9.99 PDF ebook, $16.50 paperback or $40.00 PDF campus license edition) will continue to be available until an updated publication is ready or as long as it continues to sell, whichever comes last. The updated publication, including 2012 data, will probably be shorter and will definitely be published by a professional publisher–either more expensive for some libraries or “free” for others (as in, you’ve already paid for it). It should appear in the late spring/early summer of 2014. More details when that time approaches.
These books just came out, and I’ll keep them available as long as there’s some interest, which typically means I won’t even think about deleting them for 18 months to two years:
- Your Library Is…: A Collection of Library Sayings, $16.99 paperback (and my favorite of the new books, even if it’s less useful than the others)
- Your Library Is…: A Collection of Library Sayings, $8.99 PDF ebook (also available in a deluxe PDF edition by contributing $50 or more to Cites & Insights)
- $4 to $1: Public Library Benefits and Budgets, Volume 1, Libraries by Size, $24.99 paperback currently discounted to $19.96. This (and the next two, identical internally) provides the most up-to-date discussion of public library benefits and budgets in 2011 and how they’ve changed from 2009.
- $4 to $1: Public Library Benefits and Budgets, Volume 1, Libraries by Size, $9.99 PDF ebook
- $4 to $1: Site License Edition, volume 1, $39.99 PDF ebook
- The inCompleat Give Us a Dollar and We’ll Give You Back Four, $26.99 paperback–all the text and commentary and most of the figures for 2010: a big book full of good information, with more measures and more details than I’ve done for 2011.
- The Compleat Give Us a Dollar vol. 1: Libraries by Size, $9.99 PDF ebook–includes 10-color line graphs that wouldn’t work in the paperback (which is why it’s inCompleat).
- The Compleat Give Us a Dollar vol. 1, site license version, $39.99 PDF ebook