PW has struck a deal with NA Publishing that will result in the entire archive of 'Publishers Weekly' print magazine, some 750,000 pages, to be digitized.
“The complete digitization of the Publishers Weekly archives has been a goal since our acquisition of this extraordinary resource; for the sake of posterity and of history it must be saved,” says George W. Slowik, Jr., president and CEO of PWxyz LLC, the parent company of Publishers Weekly. “It will provide an historical record of the advancement of the industry, with news, features, sales figures, trends and so much more. As well, the inclusion of PW’s renowned book reviews, which began in the 1940s, serves literary historians and lovers of literature alike.”
While about 200,000 PW reviews are currently available in digital form, another 100,000 more have not yet been digitized. PW reviews approximately 9,000 titles per year.
“Providing students and scholars with access to the Publishers Weekly digital archive,” says Jeff Moyer, president of the Michigan-based NA Publishing, “supports a new level of research and understanding of America’s publishing industry. Every page, every article, every table and all of the advertisements will be reproduced as originally printed in full color.”
NA has begun the digitization process and Moyer expects all the archives will be digitized sometime in 2017. The digital archive, which will be fully searchable, will be sold to libraries and made available as gated content accessible to subscribers on PW’s website.
