[Genealib] Reprinted books without indexes

Tue Nov 28 08:24:30 EST 2006

Craig,

Thank you for chiming in with your thoughtful response.  I, for one, have
learned from your explanation of the publisher's side of things.  And, I
agree with your last point/caution about not _all_ references being in an
index.  I have found gold mines, unindexed, in indexed volumes by slogging
through the text.

Cheers,
Din.

Donna Dinberg
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
donna.dinberg at lac-bac.gc.ca      
** The above are my own opinions only and do not reflect those of my
employer. **

> -----Original Message-----
> From: genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu 
> [mailto:genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu] On Behalf Of 
> Craig Scott
> Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 10:29 PM
> To: 'Librarians Serving Genealogists'
> Subject: E: [Genealib] Reprinted books without indexes
> 
> I promised myself that I would not enter into this fray, but 
> someone made the mistake of wondering what publishers would 
> have to say about it. Largely because I agree that an index 
> is a very important part of any genealogical book I don't 
> think we are the culprit, but we do and will continue to 
> publish books that sometimes will not contain indexes. 
> 
> That said I would like to add some points to the conversation.
> 
> 1) If you draw and quarter all of the publishers who fail to 
> create an index for a book, you will have no publishers left, 
> eventually.
> 
> 2) As I watch many genealogical publishers going out of 
> business, cutting back on production, laying off employees, 
> and like me, just generally trying to weather the current 
> storm, I am reminded that the reason that I live in this 
> stress, is GREED. Yep, that one word would sum it all up.
> 
> 3) If an author brings you a book and refuses to index it the 
> publisher has three options, publish it, reject it or pay 
> someone to index it. We provide our authors who will not 
> index a book brochures from indexers, but still some refuse 
> to do it. If I pay someone to index a work I can forgo 
> publishing two to four other books that month. And those four 
> have indexes.
> The question I have to ask is if this work should be 
> available even though it does not have an index. For every 
> one person that says a book without an index is not worth 
> doing, I can find you five that appreciate that it is in print. 
> 
> 3) The advice that the one can make more money from an 
> indexed book vs. an unindexed book is not something that I 
> have ever experienced. Pricing of books is usually a function 
> of print cost. So an index page is worth as much as any other 
> page in the price calculation. So yes, more money can be 
> made, but not enough to make up for the cost of indexing 
> (which explains why we ask the author to provide the index, 
> rather than do the indexing ourselves).
> 
> 4) The advice that an indexed book is a better seller is also 
> something that I have not experienced. I have a warehouse 
> full of fully indexed titles that remain from the days when 
> books were published in hardback and in runs of 500 or a 
> 1000. Some have been in that warehouse or its predecessors 
> for 15 years or more. In point of fact about 350 titles 
> represent most of our sales, and of the 2253 we have in print 
> last year, we sold less than 3 copies of 1,000 titles 
> (Heritage Books has always had a policy of doing indexes so 
> an index has, it would appear little to do with sales). 
> 
> 5) For those libraries who have determined not to purchase 
> books unless they have indexes I am reminded of those who 
> will not purchase books unless they are hardbacks. I have yet 
> to see these attributes as a part of any collection 
> management policy, but then I have only seen a few. I can 
> understand that given that a book is available, one with and 
> one without, the indexed version might be a better choice.
> 
> 6) If you have a problem with a publisher, you should tell 
> them directly.
> Having them wonder about why you don't order from them 
> anymore doesn't' seem to work, we come up with the wrong 
> ideas instead of the right one.
> 
> We publish books with indexes, with some exceptions, and I 
> don't feel like the culprit here, maybe I am. But I have to 
> say this about indexes, they are a crutch that no real 
> genealogist should rely on. The fact that something is not in 
> an index does not mean that there is not information about 
> the person of interest in the work. Personally, I don't trust 
> them, I use them, but I don't trust them. And to my mind they 
> are hardly a reason to deny your patrons access to a title. 
> But the lack of an index is usually a reason for frustration 
> for me, and I can understand it in others.
>  
> C.
> 
> Craig R. Scott, CG
> President and CEO
> Heritage Books, Inc.
> 65 East Main Street
> Westminster, MD 21157
> 800 876-6103
> crscott at HeritageBooks.com
>  
> 2266 books in print and growing. Visit www.HeritageBooks.com 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu
> [mailto:genealib-bounces at mailman.acomp.usf.edu] On Behalf Of 
> espear at shareinet.net
> Sent: Monday, November 27, 2006 2:42 PM
> To: Librarians Serving Genealogists
> Cc: genealib at mailman.acomp.usf.edu
> Subject: Re: [Genealib] Reprinted books without indexes
> 
> I guess that I would sum it up with one word - GREED!   The publishers
> find an uncopywrited book that they believe that they can 
> make money from.
>  Never mind that they could probably make a lot more with a 
> great index. 
> So they reproduce it and put it on the market.   One way to 
> stop this is
> to refuse to buy any books from these publishers.  This can 
> be effective especially if you have purchased from these 
> publishers before and they wonder why you have stopped buying 
> from them.  If enough people did this the un-indexed reprints 
> would stop.
> 
> Elmer Spear, founder
> Elmer's Genealogy Library
> Madison, Florida
> 
> 
> 
> > Why do publishers reprint some books without adding indexes?  Also, 
> > why do genealogical publishers print new works without indexes?  I 
> > would be happy to pay more to make the information in these 
> books easily accessible.
> >
> > Sharen Lee
> > Live Oak Public Libraries
> > Savannah, GA
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> > genealib at mailman.acomp.usf.edu
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> >
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