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Web Watch
Calvin Reid -- 2/7/00

Facts on File Online
Facts on File tuned up its Web site late last year to provide online subscription access to its popular On File Binders series. The OFBs are loose-leaf reference works that allow teachers to easily update, customize or produce handouts by subtracting or adding pages to the three-ring binder format. Kate Moore, FOF's director of marketing, told PW, "We've made [OFBs] an online resource," eliminating the need to store the sometimes unwieldy binders. Now teachers can subscribe online, receive a password-protected log-on and download the binder pages. She explained that they are "copyright free," meaning teachers can download, print and mix and match as needed without seeking permission each time. FOF has also created text and image databases out of its many reference titles and dictionaries. "Librarians are really logging on," said Moore. "They are quick to recommend the site to teachers." FOF print titles are available for sale directly online at a 10% discount.

An E-book Original
Last year, The Angels of Russia, a novel by Patricia le Roy from a small U.K. publisher, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. This was also a minor publishing landmark: the first time a purely digital book was nominated for a major literary prize. Online Originals is the lucky e-publisher. The firm publishes digital editions only -- not even print-on-demand paper versions -- according to publisher and cofounder David Gettman. The firm was launched by Gettman, an American writer and editor, and Christopher Macann, a British professor at Bordeaux University, in 1997, specializing in "unusual, innovative or alternative" writing, said Gettman in an e-mail interview with PW. The founders were encouraged by the low cost of Web publishing and distribution. OO publishes about 20 titles a year in fiction, nonfiction and drama, but Gettman said the number will increase to 50 this year. Titles, which cost $7, are culled from about 500 submissions a month and offered in two publishing lines: OO Works, one or two titles a month that, in Gettman's words, "appeal to us the most," which the company professionally edits; and OO Direct, another three or four titles a month that are published untouched by OO editors, at no cost to the writers and with OO's usual 50% royalty contract. OO titles are available only through the OO Web site. Each e-text is handsomely designed and delivered via an e-mail attachment. Although Gettman declined to provide exact figures, he told PW, "Our income covers costs," and added that titles sell "in the hundreds of copies a year. So far as I know, no one is doing any better than this." Naturally, the site also offers e-books by Gettman and Macann. The site is located at www.onlineoriginals.com.

Sarabande G s to College
That's right, Sarabande Books, the literary publisher based in Louisville, Ky., has launched Sarabande in Education, an interactive Web site (www.sarabandebooks.org/sie) featuring nine SB titles prepared for use by college teachers and students. Nickole Brown, SB's director of marketing, told PW the site is funded by a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest grant and provides teaching aids, author interviews, readers' guides and message boards for students of composition, writing and contemporary literature. According to Brown, there are 13 universities participating and the site has averaged 800 visitors a month since its debut in September. Professors who adopt an SB title receive password-protected access to the site. Sarah Gorham, SB president, called the program a "lively resource" designed to enlarge the number of readers for small press titles--and it seems to be working. Brown pointed to the popularity of p t James Baker Hall's The Mother on the Other Side of the World (500 copies sold to 18 classes) and noted that critic Molly McQuade's Stealing Glimpses and p t Belle Waring's Dark Blonde are among students' favorites. Brown also helps with Web anxiety. "Some professors are still a bit Internet wary."
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