Bibs & Blather
Sponsorship, Projects and News
Since January 2005, YBP Library Services has provided sponsorship for Cites & Insights.
That sponsorship will end at the end of 2009.
I’m extremely grateful to YBP for the sponsorship; it’s helped keep C&I going.
I need a new sponsor (or group of sponsors) for Cites & Insights, for 2010 and beyond.
Candidates could include any group involved with or interested in library issues (or the issues discussed in the journal). I’d be most comfortable with a sponsor whose own activities I’d be unlikely to discuss in any case. That includes, for example:
· Library automation companies
· Library consortia
· Database and index companies
· Other companies directly serving libraries–booksellers etc.
C&I has strong readership. As noted in the May 2009 issue, the journal’s had nearly 1.4 million pageviews in more than three-quarters of a million sessions. Roughly half the issues have had at least 4,000 readers, with 12 having more than 6,000 (and one having more than 22,000). Adding pageviews for separate HTML articles, more than 60 articles have been read at least 7,000 times and another 94 at least 5,000 times.
Send me email if you’re interested in discussing sponsorship: waltcrawford at gmail.com. The sponsor will be mentioned on the website, on the front and back page of each issue, and on every separate HTML article.
Could I gain enough revenue, or comparable revenue, directly from readers?
The paperback annual editions of C&I have been priced to be direct revenue generators (and if someone buys a downloadable version, they’re essentially contributing $40). So far, revenue from that source averages about $10 a year…not quite enough to replace sponsorship.
Early on, I had PayPal and Amazon Tip Jar links to allow direct contributions. I did receive some–but the total was, as I remember, in the low three digits.
I’m open to suggestions.
I’m not quite ready to write that essay on “Success and failure at PoD publishing.” It may wind up as a column elsewhere, or it may appear here later. It’s fair to say that one of my attempts has been reasonably successful—and that the rest have pretty much failed. I think there are some interesting lessons and some issues specific to the books themselves.
On Walt at Random, I discussed four possible “book-size” projects for the future. These are all projects that could result in PoD (or traditionally published) books and they’re all projects I suspect would take a few hundred hours’ work. I’d planned to make decisions right around June 1. As of this writing, here’s where things stand:
· Balanced Libraries, Second Edition: Not going to happen, at least not any time soon.
· Blogging for Libraries, a replacement for both Public Library Blogs and Academic Library Blogs: Not going to happen barring full sponsorship. Period. If someone wants the core spreadsheets used for the 2007 projects, get in touch; something might be arranged.
· The Liblog Landscape Revisited: Based on book sales, this should also be a “not gonna happen” situation—but it’s not that easy. Consider this one still up in the air. I could work on it anyway, probably publishing most results in Cites & Insights; I could postpone it until 2010 (but that’s tricky); I could abandon it.
· Libraries as short-run publishers: This could be a combination of book and workshop. I’ve had one or two nibbles of interest, and this might be a slightly smaller project—but so far, I haven’t seen enough solid interest to assure me that the work would yield a substantial tangible benefit either to me or to libraries. I also haven’t entirely abandoned this idea, but I have this fear that I could do a great book and workshop proposal, sell five copies of the book, and have ten people attend the one and only workshop. That would be a lose:lose situation.
There are always other possibilities, of course—particularly in a new home in a new city with a fairly large library.
Walt at Random moves to a new home in early June: ScienceBlogs. I’ve been invited to join the new group of information science bloggers, a group that began with John Dupuis and Christina Pikas. After examining the situation and other ScienceBlogs blogs, I accepted. You’ll find future posts at scienceblogs.com/ waltatrandom/
The archive will stay at walt.lishost.org (I’m hoping it will also be available at the new site), but if there are new posts after the post announcing the move (other than announcements of Cites & Insights issues), they’ll be under the banner Walt, Even Randomer—and yes, I’m aware that “randomer” is a dumberer kind of word.
You may see more substantive posts at the new Walt at Random—that is, more posts with substance, and possibly posts with more substance.
Cites & Insights is not part of this arrangement. See the first section of Bibs & Blather: I’m looking for new sponsorship.
Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large, Volume 9, Number 8, Whole Issue 118, ISSN 1534-0937, a journal of libraries, policy, technology and media, is written and produced by Walt Crawford, Editorial Director of the Library Leadership Network.
Cites & Insights is sponsored by YBP Library Services, http://www.ybp.com.
Opinions herein may not represent those of Lyrasis or YBP Library Services.
Comments should be sent to waltcrawford@gmail.com. Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large is copyright © 2009 by Walt Crawford: Some rights reserved.
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URL: citesandinsights.info/civ9i8.pdf