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The Authors' site is, very simply, a place where "Asian" authors can have simple, yet effective, Web sites.
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| "Asian" | We do not mean "Asian" in the sense of race or ethnic origin. It is meant broadly to include any writer of books on "Asian themes", writers from Asia, or writers who live and work in Asia. |
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| Objectives | This is not a commercial site in the sense that services are provided gratis; nor do the pages directly promote commercial interests. Nevertheless, readers often find it appealing to know more about authors before they purchase books, and as more book-buying moves onto the Internet, it becomes more important to have such author background information on-line as well. Most writers may be very good at writing, but not terribly good at creating web sites. (If you are good at this and have a good Web site, we can link to it rather than creating another site.) These Web sites allow authors to create a single point of reference on who they are as people, links to on-line excerpts, articles and reviews.
Some Asian authors are of course very well-known; others are not. For well-known authors, these pages allow you to have some control over the way you are perceived and presented; for less well-known authors, these pages provide a way of reaching a wider audience. |
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| What |
This site is primarily directed at authors of fiction and non-fiction for a "general" (rather than academic) audience. Initially at least, it will be restricted to authors who are published (if not necessarily writing in) English. Since we want to satisfy the curiousity that may arise from use of the site, we also want to be able to supply the authors' books, so we will in general restrict the site to authors whose books are or can be made commercially available via Paddyfield.com: this may require some cooperation from your publisher. |
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| Terms |
This service is, for authors and currently, free-of-charge, but there, of course, some simple terms. We must, unfortunately, be allowed to accept authors for inclusion at our discretion. Free-of-charge services must, if they are to succeed, be extremely efficient -- which implies that our objective in these pages is effective communication rather than, perhaps, creativity. At any rate, while we will make every effort to accomodate authors' requests, ultimately we are resonsible for the site and its contents, and we need to remain the ultimate arbiter of what appears on these pages. |
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| How |
In the longer-term, we hope to automate this service so that authors can pretty much create and maintain their pages by themselves through simple on-line forms. (Once this happens, it will allow to accomodate more authors more easily and the terms in paragraph above might be relaxed.) However, before we can do that, we need to work with more authors so as to be able to design "templates" that cover all the areas that authors are likely to desire. So, for now, we are doing pages by hand.
For the moment, therefore, just write us and we'll handle each enquiry as it comes. We will require basic publicity material: photo(s), biography, list of publications, list of relevant links (if any; e.g. on-line reviews, universities or magazines in which the author may work, on-line article, etc.), etc. We would be happy to work with your publisher if that is easier. |
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| Why |
Why is Paddyfield doing this for free? Paddyfield.com is, we like to think, the most dynamic and innovative bookseller in Asia. Authors are, ultimately, the source of the products we sell -- and we are very good at creating simple but effective Web pages and, just as important, integrating the information form many pages into a complete whole that is easy to navigate. If someone else were providing this assistance to Asian authors, then perhaps we would not see the need to offer it ... but no one else is. | |
| Contacts |
E-mail: books@paddyfield.com Telephone: +852/2511-4211 Post: 23rd Floor, Success Commercial Building, 245-251 Hennessy Road, Hong Kong © 2001, Paddyfield.com Limited. All rights reserved. |