TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Publishers Weekly removing E-Book Report and Holt and Nudo blog archives from public view

By David Rothman

The New York Times and some other major publications are earning millions in ad money by letting the public discover and read old content in this era of search engines. To the vast credit of Publishers Weekly, it generally sees the value of preserving Web-published items. Such is my impression.

Yesterday, however, without explanation, PW told me that it was removing not just the E-Book Report archives, but also those of two other “inactive blogs” from public view.

Zapped from open Internet

Except as Google listings, probably soon to vanish except as reproduced in the TeleBlog, my PW blog posts and the related reader comments will apparently no longer exist on the open Internet. I had inquired about E-Book Report after finding that the TeleBlogs links to the PW blog’s archives no longer worked.

Some traces of the e-book blog, just headlines without the actual posts or comments, remain for now, but the text is gone. The screen shot above is from one of the first E-Book Report posts. My bog started in October 2007, and ran until March 3, having been put on hold due to what the PW Editor Sara Nelson described as a rethinking of Web strategy. Both in public and private, Sara had praised my work.

Former NYT man and ex-PW deputy editor’s blogs also on removal list

The other two blogs were by David Nudo, former PW publisher and ex-managing director of book advertising for the New York Times, and the Karen Holt, ex-deputy editor and former Web editor, who hired me for E-Book Report.

I sampled Google listings for the Nudo blog and found it apparently was already gone except for a few vestiges. Karen’s blog was still accessible just a few minutes ago, although I gather this will change.

“Archived but not visible”

Sara Nelson e-mailed me that the three blogs will be “will be archived but they will not be active or visible.”

With due respect to Sara, I hope PW will reconsider the planned invisibility. This legendary magazine is on the auction blog along with other Reed Business Information publications and could use every ad dollar. PW is indeed the bible of the publishing industry. As I see it—I’d be curious how others felt—you shouldn’t tear pages from a bible in either the print or virtual incarnation.

Even Karen’s book-party items could be valuable later on for literary biographers. Karen ran photos, not just lively text—for example, a picture of Joan Didion with Toni Morrison at a National Book Awards gathering. I’ve love to know what people at PW’s sister publication, Library Journal, would think of the disappearance of Karen’s blog from the open Web, where future biographers can more easily discover her material. As for David Nudo, now the director of sales and marketing at Shelfari, he is highly respected within both the book- and journalism-related regions of publishing. What might seem to be his ephemeral observations could likewise have value for scholars in the future.

Despite the “Link this” invitations…

Many will also be perplexed why PW would remove blogs after having laudably used “Link this” items to generate advertising traffic. It’s totally understandable why the “inactive” blogs would no longer show up on PW home page, where there is only so much space and where PW needs to feature the newest items. But from inside pages, too?

The removal of the archives will leave holes not just in the TeleBlog but also in the blogs of other linkers who read “Link this” and took PW at its word. Mainstream publications like Publishers Weekly, some 135 years old, pride themselves on tradition and stability. Vanishing links send the opposite message. I’m especially baffled why PW said on March 18, during a site slowdown (purge-related?), that “The site should be in full working order again very soon.” AWOL links are not within the realm of “full working order.”

Moving on

Well, enough said. I’m going to move on, knowing that just about all my PW entries are accessible anyway, via identical or similar TeleBlog posts, although it’s a shame that my PW readers’ informative comments will vanish, too.

As usual, my best wishes to Sara and crew. My intent here isn’t to war with PW but to give it a little tough love to encourage it to get back on the right course with appropriate Web-access policies. Considering PW’s importance in the ecosystem of publishing—small bookstores rely heavily on its judgments—let’s hope that the right buyer comes along soon. Good luck, Sara!

Sara’s full note: “David—all of our inactive blogs (yours, David Nudo’s, and yes, Karen’s) have been or will be removed from the rotation on the site.  They will be archived but they will not be active or visible. Thanks.”

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