From Publishers Weekly, 3/25/2009 1:17:00 PMA new Web site that features 1.8 million author Web pages has been launched by Filedby, Inc., a new company founded by former Ingram executive Peter Clifton and industry analyst Mike Shatzkin. Filedby.com host Web pages that provides a brief biography and a list of works for all American and Canadian authors. Users can login and write reviews or make comments about authors. Authors, or their publishers, can update or link to the page.
Clifton noted that filedby was intentionally designed to highlight authors rather than books. “It helps make authors discoverable,” Clifton said. In addition to the social networking aspects of the site, there are links enabling users to buy the book. Filedby will host the site for free, but will charge a fee for authors or publishers who want to add more options such as media postings, event listings and online press kits. Clifton believes that with publishers looking to cut costs, filedby provides an inexpensive way to give authors a Web presence.
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We all know that web presence is extremely important for any author. I don't advocate wild spending sprees for the purchase of a dot com: in most cases your Internet service provider can give you ample space for free. This site is also free to authors who have published a book and have a valid ISBN, so it's worth a look. I thought the pages were nice, simple, easy to look at, and for additional fees, of course, authors can add other services to their page. -- cannegardner
3 comments:
I claimed ny Filedby page but am not holding my breath. Uptake by either authors or readers seemed to be minimal, at best.
Do keep us posted Em. Sometimes I think having your own web-site is more effective than having these scattered profile pages all over the cosmos. But who really knows.
Filedby was able to enter the details I provided them for the two anthologies I edited --
But then I could not claim them because I was not an "author." As one of the co-editors, my name and my co-editor's name appears on the cover, the copyright page, the title page, etc. -- yet Filedby is not equipped to allow me to claim my own book. So there is nothing that I can do because of the Filedby developer's incompetence in how they created their site.
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