Weeding the bookstore: Details on C&I Books

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

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

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

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:

 

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