A viable answer to the book jacket permissions issue

[Barbara Brattin]

Thanks to everyone for their responses to my posting concerning book jacket 
permissions. One of the respondents, Andrew Albanese, was able to sort this 
issue out through professional contacts within publishing houses. Andrew is 
a reporter/contributing editor contributing regularly to the LJ academic 
newswire and encourages everyone with news or an issue that needs checked 
out to contact him at aalbanese at cahners.com. I highly recommend him- he 
came up with a perfect solution to my problem. Andrew has given me 
permission to post the solution to the book jacket permissions problem. 
Thank you, Andrew, from Warren-Newport, and all other libraries that have 
been puzzled by this problem! Here's Andrew's solution:

Hi Barbara.  This all sounded so strange to me, especially as a former
> editor myself with a number of trade houses.  Why the heck would S&S deny
> you permission to effectively PROMOTE their books on your web page?  So I
> called them and to no real surprise had quite a disjointed, get-nowhere
> conversation about policies, as well as the specifics of your case.  But
> my
> most interesting conversations were with persons at other houses.   And I
> can conclude that what happened to you with S&S speaks directly to plain
> old
> bureaucratic inefficiency rather than any sort of attempt to keep
> libraries,
> or you, from using S&S jackets.  Basically, here's the deal:  whenever 
you
> want to use a book jacket, go through the publicity department.  Call
> them,
> don't fax.  Publicists are so swamped that if you fax 'em it's likely to
> sit
> around, get lost, shuffled.  Call the publicity department, tell them 
what
> you want to do, and they'll be delighted to accomodate you.  Most
> publicity
> directors will tell you you do not need any further permission than
> theirs,
> and will even offer to send you jacket art you can scan.  However, some
> houses will want to grant a written permission, but will execute it
> quickly
> through the publicity department.  But that probably won't be the case
> with
> most libraries.  S&S permissions people said that "everyone needs their
> permission to reprint book jackets, even newspapers."  Well, that was a
> big
> surprise to all the papers I spoke to!
>
> Permissions departments are by nature understaffed and overworked.  And
> the
> word website is a dirty word to them, as most houses will rarely consent
> to
> handing their content over to a third-party website, for fairly obvious
> reasons.   But call the publicity department and tell them you want to
> feature the jacket of one of their book on your website so all your
> readers
> will know what a great book it is, and you'll see your request greeted
> with
> more enthusiasm and less red tape.  Publicists job is to push, sell,
> promote
> titles.  Permissions dept. job is to protect the house and assure sub.
> rights income.  For any librarian who wants to reprint jacket art, go
> through publicity.
>
> -Andrew