Final Note: Wiley Technical Communications Library Re: TECHWR-L Digest - 11 Apr 1999 to 12 Apr 1999

Subject: Final Note: Wiley Technical Communications Library Re: TECHWR-L Digest - 11 Apr 1999 to 12 Apr 1999
From: Karen Schriver <ks0e -at- ANDREW -dot- CMU -dot- EDU>
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 15:33:49 -0400

Hello,

I can speak about the series since my book is published by Wiley. Yes,
it's true that the technical communication library is no longer. My book
Dynamics in Document Design was slated for the library but the library idea
was cancelled in 1996, a year before mine was published. I got the
impression that Wiley saw "technical communication" as too narrow and that
the series was beginning to be branded narrowly by the work of early
authors. Incidentally many of the books that were posted today are not in
the libary even though they are indeed all Wiley books about technical
communication; I'm sure Wiley wants everyone to know about all of their
books and would give a full list of their technnical communication
offerings. But technically speakking, no book has been published in the
series since 1996. I was glad Wiley did so because I felt that the term
"technical communication" was too narrow for my book and in fact is
misleading about its contents. So I was glad to escape the series.

The original goal behind naming a series was--I think--to try to get shelf
space in trade bookstores under a unified theme. However, bookstores being
so darn
conservative never warmed up to the idea of a shelf devoted to technical
communication, and instead, picked and chose titles/authors according to
preference of managers and distributors and shelved them where they wanted
to. For such reasons, it is almost always hard to find anything in our field
in a traditional bookstore; typically, the sales people are clueless.
Information design? What are you talking about? Eyes glaze over...In our
field it's much easier to shop online where keyword search promotes access.
It's unfortunate, however, that novices to our field and even the person
with just a passing interest in our field will undoubtedly miss many good
books they would otherwise buy--just because they don't know the books exist
and don't know how to look for them or what they might be called. They
shouldn't have to know the mysteries of how things are shelved.

Even though I was happy to see my book marketed independently from the tech
comm series, that too, had its drawbacks. My distributor thought the best
place for my book was smack in the middle of the computer trade books
(general reference section books because these books reportedly have the
highest browser traffic in most physcial bookstores). This meant my book was
shelved between Dynamic HTML
and C++ books, neither of which have anything to do with my topic. Once an
author's book is sold to a distributor, the distributor tells the store
manager where to shelve it. For our field that has tended to mean we
shuffled off to either of 3 places: (1) reference section -- with
dictionaries, atlases, and How to Write a Resume, (2) with computer books
--from the hardcore programming to the mundane; (3) graphic design/desktop
publishing--from stuff on Using Photoshop to Victorian borders for your
greeting cards. So you see getting our field noticed is not going to be easy
with so much "visual noise" clouding perceptions about who we are. A problem
for our field, and it continues to be a biggie, is how to name it, how to
label its intellectual properties/artifacts in ways that resonate with the
public, and alas, where to shelve our work so it will be found easily. I'm
glad there are now online bookstores and I think they have been an asset to
making our field more visible.

karen schriver

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