[KS] books, sellers, readers & collectors

Joy Kim joykim at usc.edu
Sat Aug 27 10:54:37 EDT 2011


The Korea Foundation 국제교류재단 runs what I believe to be the largest South Korean book gift program to overseas institutions called "Reference Materials [i.e. Books] Distribution Program."  The Foundation purchases quantities of books and freely distribute them to overseas libraries, museums,  schools, and research centers.  Its Website, "Books on Korea,"  also works as an excellent bibliography or selection tools for librarians or scholars.

I lifted the following description from its Website:  http://www.clickkorea.org/books/english/found/about.html  

The Korea Foundation regularly distributes books and multimedia materials on topics related to Korea, especially in the areas of humanities and social sciences, to public libraries that are in need of Korea-related materials. Institutions can thus apply for the Korea Foundation’s Reference Materials Distribution Program through the booksonkorea.org site.

Joy Kim
Curator, Korean Heritage Library
East Asian Library
University of Southern California
University Park
Los Angeles, CA90089-1825
Tel:  213-740-2329 or 213-740-2535
Fax: 213-740-7437
http://www.usc.edu/korea
http://libguides.usc.edu/korea

President
Council on East Asian Libraries
http://www.eastasianlib.org

----- Original Message -----
From: Witteveen GP <sjmi_y at yahoo.com>
Date: Friday, August 26, 2011 1:00 pm
Subject: [KS] books, sellers, readers & collectors
To: "koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>

> With regard to clearing the stock of books, it makes sense to go 
> back to first principles:
> What is the mission of the publisher/distributor/author?
>  
> Supposing that the goal is to engage a wider audience in matters 
> concerning Korean language, society and culture.
> Then the goal becomes how to identify collectors and readers - go 
> to them directly, rather than to wait for them to come to you.
> The Korean Studies Discussion List perhaps reaches the widest 
> circle of fellow authors, researchers and institutional settings.
> But then there are other allied audiences such as the diasporic 
> communities of (hyphenated) Koreans who could be reached through 
> other channels, or in association and affiliation with products or 
> services they may use. Lastly there are libraries where readers of 
> the indefinite future may discover the works while browsing.
>  
> Given the task of distributing the titles and disseminating the 
> discussions contained between the covers, I can imagine a few 
> courses of action beyond the above pin-point marketing directly to 
> target readers and collectors:
>  
> 1. Check with books.google about getting 10% (or whatever their 
> sample proportion may be) of each title digitized into their system.
>  
> 2. Possibly "cherry-pick" a few pages, illustrations or at least 
> the ToC to put online for everyone to browse and bring them one 
> step closer to a buying decision.
>  
> 3. Create a "friends of RASKB books" to voluntarily distribute 
> copies, working as "mules" to major cities, universities and 
> libraries (using personal luggage space to carry 8-10 titles 
> prearranged for delivery to the various destinations for the cost 
> of RASKB publishing; "at cost" clearance in other words). This 
> system depends on trust for executing it and maybe something like 
> Paypal.com for transactions since I seem to recall that they 
> specially support non-profit usages.
>  
> 4. Offer special buying incentives to RASKB event attendees and 
> tour participants: minimal mark-up, but even better pricing if 
> buying 3 copies or more. Students of Korean language in-country are 
> another special audience to pitch to.
>  
> 5. Planning ahead, consider transitioning all future titles to 
> mostly digital publication for eBook reading. Hardcopies would be 
> via a 3rd party "print on demand" vendor. For your reference, I'm 
> collecting useful advice on the publishing process electronically 
> at http://sites.google.com/site/anthroview/ebooks
> By following the digital path, you will have few pulpable titles. 
> Of course, there will always be a place for the older technology of 
> ink set on paper, but the eBook method has many merits, too.
>  
> Wishing RASKB well from middle Michigan, USA,
>  
> Guven Peter Witteveen, sjmi_y at yahoo.com
> Outreach Education Consultant and Evaluator
>  
>  
> --- On Wed, 8/24/11, Brother Anthony <ansonjae at sogang.ac.kr> wrote:
> 
> From: Brother Anthony <ansonjae at sogang.ac.kr>
> Subject: [KS] RASKB Books
> To: "Korean Studies Discussion List" <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
> Date: Wednesday, August 24, 2011, 12:49 AM
> 
> 
> I wonder if I could ask the members of the list for some advice? 
> The Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch has been publishing its 
> journal Transactions since 1900 and scholarly books about Korea 
> since the 1960s. In our storeroom we currently have thousands of 
> unsold books and several hundred copies of every issue of 
> Transactions since 1960, as well as 60 reprints of the complete 
> volumes 1-40 of Transactions. Our question is what we should do 
> with them all? We would like to sell them, of course. But how? For 
> example, Sam Hawley's "Imjin War" is currently priced on Amazon.com 
> at? $450 new from individual sellers, whereas we (the publishers) 
> have several hundred copies in stock available at about one tenth 
> of that price. Yes, we are not good at marketing, obviously. And 
> getting listed in Amazon.com from overseas is out of the question. 
> The full list can be seen in our home page http://www.raskb.com/ 
> and I would be very grateful for suggestions. The radical
> solution,? "pulp the lot," has something to be said for it but 
> there are some very fine books there. Richard Rutt's edition of 
> James Gale's "History of the Korean People" for example. Do we have 
> any alternative?
> 
> Brother Anthony
> President, RASKB
> 




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