HarperCollins goes green with online catalog

May 13 2008

This post is a follow-up to my post last month about publishers going green.

Every little bit helps. That is my philosophy when trying to tackle something like waste and the environment. So I was pleased when I came across an article on Publishers Weekly about HarperCollins moving its massive catalog of titles online!

HarperCollins is developing an interactive, electronic sales catalog. The catalog will offer booksellers an online tool to order books and reduce Harper’ paper output.

This will allow booksellers (and hopefully the general public) to browse the catalog, read reviews, place orders and a host of other cool features. While this is something they could have done a lot earlier, it’s always better late than never. I think Jane Freidman, the President and CEO of HarperCollins, makes a good point:

"It has been clear to me for some time that catalogs are out of date as soon as they are printed. So much of what we do today is in real time. Why not our catalogs? In addition, an electronic version reduces a tremendous amount of waste in all areas, paper, production and shipping. "

While simply moving their catalog to the internet doesn’t solve all of our problems with waste, the environment, global warming, etc., at least it’s a small step in the right direction. If everyone (even large corporations) took small steps like this, it would add up to make a big difference.

This is good news for ebooks

The environment aside, I think this also bodes well for ebooks. For one thing, it’s yet another sign that large publishing houses are embracing current technology to distribute their work electronically to a larger audience. I think it is just a matter of time until we see companies like HarperCollins start offering their books in electronic format as well.

Of course, one big hurdle that needs to be cleared before ebooks really take off is that pesky formating issue we all hate. You know; DRM, proprietary formats, highly expensive devices for the sole reason of reading ebooks. Once everyone can agree on a standard for ebooks, then I think large and small publishers will be more willing to take the plunge into ebooks. I wrote much more about this in a previous post.

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