Bookbuilders West has a home in cyberspace, following the Board of Directors' approval of a plan to create a BBW home page on the World Wide Web. The Website ( /index.htm ) is part of BooksAtoZ, the first comprehensive resource site for production, publishing, and marketing of books. This site includes links to book publishers, products, services, associations, and event calendars within the book industry.
The creation of the Bookbuilders home page has been spearheaded by Stephen Thomas of Edwards Brothers, member of the
Outreach Committee. According to Stephen, "The Outreach Committee is very excited about this opportunity as we have been looking
for ways to partner with other industry associations in an efficient, cost-
effective manner." One particularly noteworthy aspect of this
new venture, Stephen says, is that it extends the organization's outreach onto the World Wide Web, which is the portion of the Internet
that has been growing explosively as an information resource and exchange for a wide variety of businesses and consumers. Book
publishers have been prominent among those offering information-rich Websites, but until recently there has been very little available
on the Web for book production and manufacturing.
The Bookbuilders site features four major areas: calendar of events, board and committees (including the Book Show, Education, Scholarship, etc.), Jobs Bank, and Newsletter. Some of these features, such as the Calendar and Jobs Bank, will be linked to the corresponding features in the BooksAtoZ site. For example, if someone views the events listing in the BooksAtoZ site, the Bookbuilders events (such as dinner meetings and seminars) will be included in the listings, and the viewer can jump to the Bookbuilders site for more details on a particular event. You will probably be able to find out the date of the 1996 Book Show at BBW's website before you read about it in the newsletter.
The newsletter section features articles and graphics from current and recent editions of the Bookbuilders West Newsletter. This makes the newsletter articles accessible to a much wider audience--a global audience--which further magnifies the reach of Bookbuilders' educational efforts.
The Bookbuilders site is being developed and maintained by a subgroup of the Outreach Committee.
Bookbuilders pays a monthly fee to Books-AtoZ for maintaining the site, which includes all transmission charges, updates, file conversions, etc. The BooksAtoZ site is noteworthy in its own right for book publishing professionals.
Major sections within the site are: production services, "whatzup" (events calendar, educational opportunities, and employment; the volunteer moderator for this section is Stephen Thomas), commercial publishers, self-publishing, CD-ROM and multimedia, book stores and searchers, academic and government, and groups and organizations (where the Bookbuilders site is found).