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From The Firebrand Newsletter
NetGalley At the Library
Today NetGalley officially launched a new member benefit program for librarians, in conjunction with the American Library Association (ALA).
ALA members can now add their ALA member number to their NetGalley profile. When librarians request a title, you'll see the ALA logo appear next to their name on the New Requests page, so you can approve requests more quickly.
We're also launching "NetGalley at the Library"--our new online, email and social media program where we'll highlight specific titles and promotions just for librarians. You can pre-book spots in these newsletters for your titles just like the other "NetGalley Roundups," using this form. You can even include the title widget, to grant auto-approval just to librarians.
Over 7,000 librarians are already members of NetGalley. We recently conducted a survey of librarians to better understand how they read digitally, and how they use digital galleys. We'll be publishing the results in early February, after the ALA Midwinter show. (Want to meet NetGalley at the show? Email Kristina Radke to set up an appointment.)
Catch Up With Us At DBW
A whole herd of Firebrands will be at DBW this year. Fran Toolan and Susan Ruszala will be speaking - details on that below. In addition, Doug Lessing, Rob Stevens, Don Linn, Jen Lyman, Catherine Toolan and Laura Dawson will all be in attendance. For those of you who are experiencing pain around eBook delivery, this is a rare opportunity to catch up with Jen and Catherine, who lead our Content Services team.
Susan Ruszala will be on a panel on Tuesday, 1/24, at 4:00, speaking about Awareness Marketing. Fran Toolan will be speaking on Wednesday, 1/25, at 1:30 about Understanding Metadata.
We'd really love to see you, so please email Laura to set up appointments.
New Year, New Blog
Firebrand Associates is pleased to announce its new blog, [fromthewhiteboard.wordpress.com|From the Whiteboard]:
As we go about our business, we see a number of trends, ideas and things that interest us. This blog is a space where we both form and share our thinking on those that we think have broad relevance to industry participants. We also invite comments, so please have a look and chime in.
New Year, New BISAC Codes
We're pleased to make available the latest round of BISAC Codes (2011), which was recently released by BISG. The integration into the Title Management Enterprise system carries a $500 fee. Customers who are interested should contact Ask Burnie.
Of ISBNs and eBooks
Recently, BISG gave a webcast about assigning ISBNs to eBooks - the recording is available here. Salient points included:
- ISBNs for digital books should be labeled/called ISBNs, not eISBNs.
- It is the publisher's responsibility to distribute accurate metadata for all digital products in the supply chain.
- Digital products are invisible; without accurate metadata, you can't find them. Without accurate identifiers (ISBNs), you can't differentiate one from another.
- If publishers want to track ordering and sales on a granular level, they need to assign an ISBN to each format of an eBook.
- If the vendor of the eBook is a closed system (e.g. Kindle), that retailer can use proprietary identifiers rather than ISBNs.
- Otherwise, conversion houses, vendors, distributors should all use the ISBNs that the publisher has assigned.
For more details, including a complex discussion around DRM, please read BISG's policy statement.
Featured Feature: Custom Views
You know how we are at Firebrand - we love what we build. In each issue, we're offering a close-up of a Title Management feature that we built to make your life easier. As always, you can find more documentation here on Firebrandz. Did you know you can customize what you're looking at on the Title Management Web interface? There are a couple of opportunities to arrange your screen to suit your workflow.
Home Page: To customize your Home page, click the Edit button in the upper right corner. You will see a list of section groups, which refer to the sections of your Home page, and their default names. You can rename these, specify which order they should appear in, whether or not they should even be visible to you, and whether they should be minimized (if, for example, you use those sections but just not very frequently).
After you've configured your view, click the Set as My Default link. Always be sure to click Save Configuration to save your changes. Click OK to complete the process. Once back on the Home page, remember to select your desired view in the drop-down labeled Show.
Summary Pages: To customize your Title, Contact, Project and Work Summary Pages, click the Edit button in the upper right corner. A configuration page will appear, and you will be able to edit the sort order and visibility, and minimize sections. There is one difference between these settings and those on the Home page: because there are multiple tabs on some sections, those sections cannot be minimized; they can only be made visible or invisible.
From here, you may choose your preferred settings, and set the view as "Default" by clicking Set as My Default. Remember to press Save Configuration before clicking OK.
For more information about the Custom Views function on Title Management Web, including screen shots and detailed explanations,click here. For a webinar on using the Custom Views function, click here.
Question Time!
We love sharing among our customers and our staff. Question Time is a questionnaire that we're asking everyone to fill out, and we'll share one from a customer and one from a Firebrand staff member in each issue.
Troy DuFresne, Director of Publication Technology, New Harbinger
What do you actually do at your job? Work with a technology group of four who divide our collective time between ebook and mobile app development, website development and administration, and DBA for three at-times-cranky databases.
How long have you been with your company? Ten years.
Why did you go into publishing to begin with? I was fleeing crippling anxiety that was a byproduct of working as a wine salesman. Stumbling into a job at a psychology publisher was just dumb luck.
What's your biggest challenge at work? Trying to make educated guesses about where the industry is going and when. Or maybe just trying to keep so damned much content in play at once.
What's your greatest joy? The challenges, honestly. Working in today's publishing industry really keeps you on your toes. Also, since we have a soup-to-nuts technology group, there is lots of variety in the workday. Variety makes me feel pretty joyful.
What problem(s) is Firebrand helping you to solve? All of them. No joke. We wrestled with metadata distribution for a decade and electronic asset distribution for about three years before taking the Firebrand plunge. Some days I actually laugh at my desk about how easy some of these tasks are now (not to say it's always wine and roses, or anything).
What are you reading now? What are you reading now? My 60 Memorable Games, by Bobby Fischer.
What inspires you? My morning commute ride through the middle of Oakland's produce district. The sunrises tend to be beautiful, and it's always inspiring to not get run over by a forklift laden with romaine.
What makes a Firebrand? Hmmm. I'm not sure what makes one generally. What makes New Harbinger a Firebrand is our probably-self-destructive need for independence, for keeping our work in house. Adopting the various Firebrand products and services has let us keep control over most of the publish-y aspects of our business (even the technological ones) without getting mired in vexingly hard problems like ONIX interoperability and broad-market electronic distribution.
Rob Stevens, Chief Community Officer, Firebrand Technologies
What do you actually do at Firebrand? I manage the support team. I oversee the implementation of new clients onto our hosted shared database. I conduct training new training for these clients as well as additional training for existing clients. I am the account manager for a number of our existing clients and I work closely with them on a daily basis.
How long have you been with Firebrand, and how did you get here? I've been with the company since January 12, 2001. I previously worked at Newmarket International as an account manager and was brought into Firebrand by a friend and former firebrand employee.
What's your biggest challenge and/or greatest joy at work? My biggest challenge is keeping up with all of the different customers and how they use our products. My greatest joy is working with great coworkers and customers each day and working with the ever changing technology.
What should customers know about the work you do? That I'm here to help them.
What are you reading now? How are you reading it? I'm reading Act of Treason by Vince Flynn on my Kindle.
What inspires you? My family.
What makes a Firebrand? Someone who wants to learn something new each day.
