Re: ebook acquisition collectives

[<Toby.GREEN@oecd.org>]

Nearly 30 years ago when I started out in publishing I spent nine 
months as a book sales rep for Academic Press in England, 
"subbing" books to bookshops. I always wondered why we used this 
jargon rather than "repping" or simply "selling". Now I know why! 
And, of course, today, you can still find dummies on display at 
the Frankfurt Bookfair as trade publishers test ideas among the 
rights community. Thanks, Sandy, for the history lesson,

Toby Green


----- Original Message -----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu <owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thu Aug 19 05:13:52 2010
Subject: Re: ebook acquisition collectives

I'd like to respond to this by suggesting that we may be on a
path "back to the future." As I was contemplating Eric's
proposal, it occurred to me that we once had a system in place in
England whereby books were only published once there was a market
known to exist for them.  Since my own knowledge of this system
is sketchy, I called upon a true book historian, Jim West at Penn
State, to provide the details, which he has generously done, as
follows:

[snip]