Nice to know someone is making money
Saturday, July 28, 2007 at 12:29PM 
Imagine my surprise to run across the website above when looking for the publication date of one my old articles. Australian Amanda Cedaro (The Warrior Librarian) has been upset for sometime about publishers reselling her articles without compensation, but I hadn't given her much time, quite frankly. Maybe I shoulda.
What makes finding the article above especially ironic is that as a KQ volunteer author I did not get paid to write it in the first place. I wonder if ALA is getting a kick-back from British Library Direct? Could a portion of anything ALA makes on my stuff go to reducing my dues at least?
Just an FYI - nearly everything I've written (270+ items now) is available under a CC license on my "other" website. Including the article above.
Reader Comments (4)
I am probably way behind the curve on this, but I recently noticed that Amazon is selling articles as well as books. There are a few of yours for sale (articles that appeared originally in School Administrator and Phi Delta Kappan). I assume you are aware of that - but maybe not.... I am not sure what kind of business arrangements Amazon makes with you or the original publisher. I would be interested to hear how this all works. I also wonder how often people order articles this way. Being a New York resident - I am sure most of the articles I have run across are available for "free" via our state funded databases. I wonder how many people pay for articles because they are not aware of the online database services provided by their public, school and academic libraries.
Hi Jackie,
No I wasn't aware my articles were being resold on Amazon. Most contracts have give the publisher rights to re-sell electronically which traditional meant to full-text data bases like Ebsco or ProQuest. This article-by-article thing seems relatively new.
Makes me glad I am not trying to live on my writings!
Doug
Hi Doug,
I'm the coordinator of the British Library Readers Group. We are concerned about the high prices being charged by BL Direct. This was raised at our last meeting with the BL managers and we hope to get further information about how the prices are set when we meet again in the Autumn. If you, or any of your blog readers, would like to follow our progress or give us your thoughts then please sign up to our group on our new website: www.britishlibraryforum.org
Best,
Heather Brooke
Hi Heather,
Wow, thanks for writing in.
I suspect one ought to be able to charge whatever the market will bear. But do any of the publishers BLD works with every recompense the original authors of the work?
Appreciate web link and the chance to participate in your forum.
All the very best,
Doug