Although I share Jean's concerns about agent's delaying payments, I must
say that my personal experience with Haworth is that their titles are
indeed frequently delayed. I wrote an article for an issue that was to
be published in summer 1990 and it finally was published this (1991) year.
I find that many publishers are using various tactics to create direct
sales.Moody's sales reps call all the time to tell us that a title is
due to be renewed. When we tell them we have it through a vendor, they
need to know which one and then they leave us alone. One time we said
yes, we were planning to renew and ended up with two copies--one from
our agent and one direct.
More publishers are also planning to become sole source supplier--
witness Macmillan's pressure on librarians and making some of their
reference materials direct only. We, librarians, need to keep repeating
to publishers that they are NOT helping us....
Marsha Clark
NYU
clarkm@nyuacf