Publisher's Catalog in Publication—Got it!

It looks like the book is a little more official now.

Quality Books created a Publisher's Catalog in Publication for Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 1, and it's now printed on the copyright page of both the hard cover and paperback editions of the book. There was a brief burp while the new text files were uploaded to the printer, but that's all finished and both editions are back in stock. And looking pretty official.

A Catalog-In-Publication is usually given out by the Library of Congress, but they're not really interested in working with publishers who aren't yet "established" (meaning they have published less than three books). But it's not like somebody else can't do the work for you.

The Catalog in Publication is there to help the librarian catalog your book. That's it. Here's how The Donohue Group (another PCIP vendor) describes it:

"PCIP gives librarians all the information they need to quickly add a record for the book to their database or card catalog. This means improved service to library users (and happy librarians)."

So if you know somebody who knows what all the CIP symbology is about (like a really cool librarian), they could make one for you, if you ask them nice. Otherwise, there are companies that provide the service online for a fee. I think just having happy librarians around makes it worth it.

Lake Benton Public Library, Minnesota

One of the libraries I sent a free copy of Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain Vol. 1 to was in Lake Benton, Minnesota. Lake Benton is a really small town, but they can still claim an Opera House (the first image below would be it) and a barber shop. The library even wrote about receiving the book in their newsletter, and they were kind enough to send me a thank you note (hand written, of course). That doesn't happen so often these days (and really, they were the only library that did).

So thank you, Lake Benton Public Library, and if another volume of this book ever hits the shelves, watch for your copy in the mail soon after!

(And special thanks to Eileen Stephenson for taking the Lake Benton photos right in the middle of a Minnesota winter and getting them safely to my inbox.)

Book plates for the libraries

In my last post here (two weeks ago—I know), I told you about how I set up a form on the Hairy Eyeballs site where you could request a free book for your local public library.

Well, things haven't exactly gone as planned (as if they ever do)...

About five days after that post I totally migrated all my sites, emails and domain names out of GoDaddy's life. Lots of work. Lots of nail-biting. Lots of "Yay! I did it!" I'll have to tell you about that at a later date. All you need to know right now is that the form I sent you to in the last post? Yeah. That's not working at the moment. It looks like I'm going to have to do a little coaxing for that to happen, so don't expect anything out of that form until further notice.

What I was able to accomplish over the last couple of weeks was get the books that were already requested ready to ship out. I designed a book plate for inside the front cover of each book showing what library the book was donated to and who requested the donation.

And here it is, all fancy-shmancy like:

And now for the totally geeky colophon stuff:

The main font is ITC Blackadder, designed by Bob Anderton for Linotype. It reminds me of a treasure map, which felt right for the design.

The "Pittsburgh, PA" font is VT Portable Remington, designed by Susan Townsend and was also used for the chapter titles and page numbers in the book.

The handwriting in the background is a couple of images of Leonardo da Vinci's writing that I melded together in Photoshop. Here's a cool Leonardo handwriting generator that lets you type in words to see what they might have looked like if Leo had written them.

The Hairy Eyeballs Press logo was hand drawn by me during breaks at my day job. Just a little mindless doodling and there you go.

Free books for your library!

On my Facebook page, I asked friends and followers to give me the name and address of their local library so that I could send them a copy of the book. I really wanted to support local libraries, and I thought just flat-out asking would be a good idea. Turns out, people know the names of their libraries, but don't automatically go the extra distance to look up their library's contact information, so trying to get info in the comment section of a Facebook post isn't such a good idea.

To get started, I decided I should contact all the libraries first, just to make sure they actually wanted me to send them a copy of the book. (I wanted to be nice about it, you see.) But I didn't ask the Facebook people to give me their libraries' contact information, so I had to look all of that stuff up...

On Web sites that I had to search for, because I didn't tell the Facebook people that they had to give me their libraries' Web addresses either. But libraries pretty much have Web sites these days, and some of them even include a handy-dandy "Ask a Librarian" page where you can send a question to them without ever having to open your email program. So that part worked out pretty well.

While I was on the library sites, I also had to look up (and sometimes dig around, if you can believe that) for their physical mailing addresses. I kind of needed that to be able to send the books. Go figure.

But this trying-to-find-all-these-libraries'-contact-information crap is a lot more time-consuming than you might think because not all libraries have an "Ask a Librarian" page. I'm also finding out not all libraries even have contact email addresses, and two emails I sent out have already been returned as undeliverable. And from the replies I'm getting back from the libraries who did have contact information on their sites and who did take the time to reply to my request, it's looking like some of the libraries want to have a say in what they will accept for display on their shelves.

As if I'd send them something twisted or something.

So.

I'm thinking it's pretty important to ask before I send, and more importantly than that, I'm thinking I can't take all this time looking up everybody's contact information. So I've built a "Library Donation" page on the Hairy Eyeballs Press Web site with a form for anybody who wants me to send their library a book. I'm still taking requests as long as the information I need is filled out on the form.

Here's the form's URL: http://www.hairyeyeballspress.com/libraryForm.html

I appreciate your enthusiasm about the book and your library, and I'm pretty sure your library appreciates your enthusiasm as well. So thanks for your support, and make your own donation today! We want them to stick around for a long, long time.