Comments on: Balanced Libraries, a new title by Walt Crawford

By: library sputnik » alt publishing

library sputnik » alt publishing — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 20:26:04 +0000

[...] Walt Crawford, a senior analyst at OCLC, and the author and editor of Cites and Insights, has published a book using the increasingly popular self-publishing platform, Lulu. He gives an account, here (from which the quote above is taken), and Jessamyn offers some discussion here, where she mentions how cumbersome being involved in a scholarly journal can be, and notes the arrival of left of centre small library publishers, Library Juice Press, who have a terrific blog. [...]

By: Kaveman’s Daily Feed of Informative Blogs » Comment on Balanced Libraries, a new title by Walt Crawford by Rick

Sun, 25 Mar 2007 17:30:27 +0000

[...] Original post by unknown [...]

By: Rick

Rick — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 01:26:42 +0000

I self-published a book using Lulu.com last summer (a personal project that isn’t publicly available), and I will second Walt’s experience. I found the service and quality to be very good, and am looking forward to using their service again.

My project was a hardcover book with a dust jacket, and it looks and feels as durable as any non-library bound book I have handled.

One difference is that I used OpenOffice.org to create the book. OO.org’s built-in Pdf export feature made the creation of everything in the project very predictable, and the only limitations were the limitation of using a word processor to design page layouts.

By: Rory Litwin

Rory Litwin — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 20:18:14 +0000

Thanks for mentioning Library Juice Press, Jessamyn. I should clarify that while we are accepting manuscripts we have a pretty narrow publishing profile and pretty high standards (higher than McFarland or Chandos, imo). Also, because everyone involved is working on it on top of regular jobs, we are only able to put out four or five titles in a year. This means that for most people reading this who would like to do a book about librarianship, Library Juice Press is actually probably not an option for them. We’re interesting in getting a spot on the map as a politically progressive (Left) publisher in librarianship, but equally interested in earning a reputation as a publisher that puts out high quality works. We have about a half a dozen projects in progress now for the next year or two, and there is room for a couple more titles, but they would have to be right in our areas and they would have to be really good. Maybe in a few years we will be an acceptable imprint in a tenure review.

By: Kaveman’s Daily Feed of Informative Blogs » Comment on Balanced Libraries, a new title by Walt Crawford by …

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:55:12 +0000

[...] Original post by unknown [...]

By: walt

walt — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 19:54:52 +0000

Shorter version since I missed the word. Thanks for the note. I probably need to do an essay on when self-publishing does or doesn’t make sense, or at least thoughts toward that…and what sort of self-publishing makes sense in different cases.

Otherwise, just a slight correction: It’s just Lulu, not Lulu Press. If there is an imprint for the book, it’s Cites & Insights Books–albeit with no city or state, at least in the current edition. Lulu (or Lulu.com) is exceptionally clear about being a service provider and nothing more. (The book I’d purchased to try Lulu’s book quality refers to “Lulu.com edition” but doesn’t carry a logo or imprint.)

By: Kaveman’s Daily Feed of Informative Blogs » Balanced Libraries, a new title by Walt Crawford

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:44:38 +0000

[...] Original post by jessamyn [...]