Publishing News -- 1/25/2009

The Latest on the CPSIA
The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act takes effect February 10. The act was a legislative response to the continued issues with lead-based childrens' products arriving from China. Unfortunately, the Act's cure may be worse than the disease, particularly for craftmakers, small businesses, and childrens' authors and bookstores.

Unfortunately, a lot of the worry about this particular act seems appropriate. And while the Act could be refined after implementation to resolve the problems, that won't provide protection in the interim, while the act is in force in its current state.

In a nutshell, the Act requires testing on all products intended primarily for children, even used products. Because most thrift shops, used book stores, and libraries don't have the means to perform such testing, there's significant concerns in the publishing industry, among other groups. Some clarifications have been made, but the exposure still seems high. Here's the latest:

How will the CPSIA affect you? -- "I think we can all agree that lead and other harmful chemical levels in our children’s toys needs serious attention and stringent monitoring. But what this law neglects to address are the small businesses who sell stuff for kids..."

Scrap the CPSIA -- The Act's sponsors, Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush, have supported an exemption for childrens' books, as long as there are no painted, pastic, or metal components (including staples for saddle-bound books).

Children's Book Safety Issue Heats Up -- Stores were given a little additional leeway with guidance from the Consumer Product Safety Administration that they can use their general Certificate of Conformity to seel after Feb. 10.

Digital Publishing
Google and the Future of Books -- Google is buying up manuscripts for its online library. This long, but informative piece wonders if that's a good thing and looks to history to find a precedent.

How Will Piracy Affect Publishing? -- Piracy could be a bigger problem for authors than for the music industry.

One Click Away from Abandoning my Kindle -- The author would dump his Kindle for his iPhone if he could download the entire NY Times.

Marketing Your Work
See the website, buy the book -- -- A new niche in book promotion is custom-built author websites, from the basic to the intricate. Problem is, no one has quantified the monetary returns.

What not to have on your book website -- Some issues to resolve to give your website the most bang for the buck.