ALA 2009 Conference Guide in Accessible Editions

For the second year, RHYW will be producing the American Library Association Conference (July 9-15 in Chicago) Guide in accessible formats, including large print and braille. RHYW will also be providing accessible editions for the Australian Bookseller Conference (June 21-23 in Manly, AU). As well, RHYW will be attending the National Federation of the Blind Convention on July 3-8 in Detroit. Click here to go to the ALA download page, where you can download our Accessible Editions of the ALA Conference Guide.

Top 50 Bestselling Classic Authors

When ReadHowYouWant first started, we did a little research on the bestselling classic authors in terms of worldwide sales. We found some lists from the BBC and other sources in publishing and then kludged them together to create our own. Occasionally, we now get a question from a librarian who wants to select some popular classic fiction titles for her collection. In answer to that question, I am posting a list of top-selling authors. We have the complete works of most of them available in large print, DAISY and braille.

Here is the list. At the end of the list, I will add a few authors who should also be considered by librarians who are looking for popular fiction in large print. I apologize for not putting it into alphabetical order. This is more in the order that we re-typeset the books.
In some cases we have all of their works available. In others, we have not yet completed all of them. If you search by author on our web site, you can find them. If you would prefer a spreadsheet that you can sort, please let me know so I can email it to you.

The Top 50 Bestselling Classic Authors

*Names with asterisks are sure-fire authors in terms of popularity.

Kenneth Grahame
R. D. Blackmore
*Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Tressell
*Victor Hugo
Wilkie Collins
Aesopus
Lucius Apuleius
John Arbuthnot
Honore de Balzac
Benito Perez Galdos
John Keats
*Bram Stoker
*Joseph Conrad
*Mark Twain
Aphra Behn
Anthony Trollope
Oscar Wilde
Charles Kingsley
*Charles Robert Maturin
Lewis Carroll
*Anne Bronte
*Arthur Conan Doyle
Samuel Butler
Ann Radcliffe
Alexander Pope
*Louisa May Alcott
Jules Verne
John Bunyan
*Thomas Hardy
*Jane Austen
*Charles Dickens
William Makepeace Thackeray
James Boswell
Henry Fielding
*Charlotte Brontë
Leo Tolstoy
*Alexandre Dumas
D. H. Lawrence
*Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Baring-Gould
Charlotte Lennox
Anna Sewell
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
George Eliot
Herman Melville
Jerome K. Jerome
Johanna Spyri
John Galsworthy

Some Additional Popular Authors

Horatio Alger
L. Frank Baum
Willa Cather
James Fennimore Cooper
Daniel de Foe
H. Rider Haggard
Bret Harte
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Henry James
Ring Lardner
Jack London
Captain Frederick Marryat
Guy de Maupassant
Sir Walter Scott
William Shakespeare

Florida Library Association Conference Special

We are offering a 40% discount on a selection of health-related large print books as part of our Florida Library Association exhibit. You do not need to attend the conference in order to use this discount. The special prices are in effect now and are good through the end of May.

Don't forget to visit us if you will be in Orlando for the Florida Library Association, May 6-8, 2009. We will be in Booth 513 and will be raffling off 50 of our books!

Click here for the complete list with special discounted prices.

Here are some of the titles we are featuring. Click on the titles for more information.

	A Whole Foods Primer by BEATRICE TRUM HUNTER

Beatrice Trum Hunter has written numerous books on food issues, including Consumer Beware: Your Food Whats Been Done to It (Simon Schuster, 1971), The Mirage of Safety: Food Additives Federal Policy (Charles Scribners Sons, 1975), The Great Nutrition Robbery (Charles Scribners Sons, 1978), The Sugar Trap How to Avoid It (Houghton Mifflin, 1982), and Food Your Health (Basic Health Publications, 2003). As food editor for more than twenty years at Consumers Research Magazine, her monthly columns and feature articles brought cutting-edge issues before general recognition. Hunter has received many awards and recognitions for her work.

A Whole Foods Primer demonstrates the wisdom of selecting whole foods for optimal intake of the nutrients essential for good health. In this book, readers will learn about the basic nutritional components of each whole food group and their specific functions and beneficial roles in the body. The text presents nutrient profiles and surprising facts about some hundred whole foods, their historical uses as food and medicine, and the latest research that identifies their health-bestowing qualities.

	Bursting With Energy by FRANK SHALLENBERGER

In this updated revision of his acclaimed book, Bursting with Energy, Dr. Frank Shallenberger makes a clear connection between the amount of energy you have and the amount of aging you do, pointing out that, in medical terms, aging refers to a loss of function, not chronology. A thirty-year old with no loss of function is identical to a twenty-year-old, he says. And the same is true for fully functional people in their sixties--they are the same as thirty-year-olds. According to Shallenberger, the loss of functions that result from aging are themselves the result of energy loss: more energy, less aging; less energy, more aging. When Dr. Shallenberger discusses anti-aging methods, he is actually talking about improving energy production. His work with patients over the years has proven that an energy deficit is the root cause of every disease and symptom, from cancer, to fatigue, to obesity.

	Chinese Home Remedies by Lihua Wang

Lihua Wang began her career as a cardiologist in the China Academy of Traditional Medicine, in Bejing, China. In 1982, she was invited by Kaiser Permenante Research Center as a visiting scholar and later selected by the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine to teach acupuncture and Chinese herbology to American students. She has been in private practice, specializing in traditional Chinese medicine, since 1992 in Portland, Oregon.

More than 1,000 effective remedies, a treasure trove of information you can use every day. Chinese Home Remedies is a book that offers an intriguing blend of traditional Chinese medicine - as practiced today - and a wide variety of ancient Chinese folk remedies. You'll often be surprised how easily a problem that has lingered for weeks or months can be cured! This book is a distillation of Ms. Wang's 30 years of clinical experiences as both a physician in China and an acupuncturist and herbalist in the United States. It explains in simple-to-understand language how to treat yourself or a family member using a variety of techniques, including Chinese massage, food therapy, Chinese herbal formulas, and folk remedies that have been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. Did you know that apple slices can ease itching skin, hooking your middle fingers together can stop a nosebleed, or that eating peanuts can lower your blood pressure? These are only a few of the more than 1,000 effective remedies that you will find in Chinese Home Remedies. By following just a few pieces of this book's advice, you will find yourself on a healthier life path.

ReadHowYouWant's new catalog for libraries

We have just released a new catalog of our in-copyright titles as a printable PDF file that can be downloaded from our web site. The new catalog includes cover images of the books and hundreds of more titles than our last catalog had. At over 200 pp, it shows how quickly ReadHowYouWant is growing.

Click here to view it, now.

HumanWare and ReadHowYouWant Join Forces to Bring Books to Visually Impaired Readers

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Bradi Grebien-Samkow: bradi@readhowyouwant.com

503-922-0778

Contact:

Julien Larose: julien.larose@humanware.com

888-723-7273 x357

HumanWare and ReadHowYouWant Join Forces to Bring Books to Visually Impaired Readers

Sydney, Australia, March 11, 2009—HumanWare, the leader in assistive technologies for people with print disability, and digital publishing innovator ReadHowYouWant are partnering to help visually impaired readers discover the book reading device, and the format that’s right for their reading needs.

ReadHowYouWant offers thousands of books in accessible formats, including 24 pt. large print, braille, and DAISY files at www.readhowyouwant.com. HumanWare provides playback devices for readers who are blind or have low vision to use with braille and DAISY files at www.humanware.com. “From the moment it appeared on the market, the Victor Reader Stream has proven itself to be the greatest portable DAISY book reading device ever. Today we are proud to team up with Read How You Want. We invite all readers to take a look at the selection of books they have to offer. Reading should always be an enjoyable experience. We hope that our customers will regularly visit our new website where they will be able to check out new DAISY book releases. Pass the word around!” says HumanWare CEO Gilles Pepin.

Beginning in April, readers will be able to go to the HumanWare website to download free, first chapters of 20 bestselling ReadHowYouWant titles each month as part of the “Free Chapter Download Program.” The free, first chapters come from popular books from a variety of well-known publishers of adult and young adult books, including Wiley, Random House Australia, Murdoch Books, and Weekly Reader. The first month’s selected titles will include such best sellers as, The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (New World Library), “Praise Song for the Day,” the inauguration poem by Elizabeth Alexander (Graywolf Press), and Leadership and Self-Deception by the Arbinger Institute (Berrett-Kohler), as well as children’s and young adult titles to include, How to Take the GRRRR Out of Anger by Marjorie Lisovskis and Elizabeth Verdick (Free Spirit Publishing), and Extreme Habitats: Mountain Survival by Susie Hodge (Weekly Reader). After enjoying the complimentary first chapter, readers may visit ReadHowYouWant’s website at www.readhowyouwant.com to purchase the entire file.

ReadHowYouWant will be demoing HumanWare’s devices at book industry events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the London Book Fair, and Book Expo America. Similarly, HumanWare will present braille and DAISY files from ReadHowYouWant’s collection on their players at technology industry shows, including CSUN and ATIA (Assistive Technologies Industry Association) conferences.

ReadHowYouWant produces Grade 2 contracted braille files, and has developed a house style that supports automated transcription while maintaining accuracy. These files may be read with a refreshable electronic braille display such as the Humanware Braillenote or Brailliant or embossed to make traditional braille books. Words are not split at line ends to make reading easier, particularly for newer braille readers.

About HumanWare

HumanWare is the global leader in assistive technologies for vision, including products for the blind and visually impaired. HumanWare's products include BrailleNote, the leading productivity device for blind people in education, in business and in their personal lives; the Victor Reader product line, the world's leading digital talking book players; and myReader2, the new version of HumanWare's unique "auto-reader" for people with low vision. For more information visit www.humanware.com

About ReadHowYouWant

ReadHowYouWant Pty Ltd and its R&D parent company, Accessible Publishing Systems Pty Ltd are both Sydney, Australia-based privately held companies founded in 2004 by electronic publishing pioneers Christopher Stephen and Greg Duncan. When Chris’s sister, who suffers from MS, developed difficulty reading, they began experimenting to determine whether people with reading difficulties could benefit from changing the text format.

After more than four years of testing, ReadHowYouWant has successfully developed award-winning conversion technology that reformats existing books into the widest selection of on-demand, alternative format editions on the market today. Each edition has been optimized for maximum readability. The company’s goals are to make reading easier and more enjoyable by delivering formats that suit the reader and to give people with reading difficulties access to books in the formats of their choice—at an affordable price, and as soon as the book is published. For more information visit www.readhowyouwant.com.

ReadHowYouWant Partners with Random House Australia and Murdoch Books

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Bradi Grebien-Samkow: bradi@readhowyouwant.com

+1-503-922-0778 U.S.

Large Print and Accessible Book Publisher ReadHowYouWant Partners with Leading Publishers to Create Books for Visually Impaired Readers

Sydney, Australia, March 4, 2009—ReadHowYouWant, a new leader in large print, print-on-demand books, has begun partnering with Random House Australia and Murdoch Books to create accessible editions of their best-selling titles. ReadHowYouWant also announced the opening of their Australian and New Zealand website at www.readhowyouwant.com/australia. The Sydney-based company’s other Australian publishing partners include Simon and Schuster Australia, Michelle Anderson Publishing, Interactive Publications, Little Hare Books, and Insight Publications.

ReadHowYouWant Pty Ltd and its R&D parent company, Accessible Publishing Pty Ltd, are both Sydney, Australia-based privately held companies co-founded by electronic publishing pioneers Christopher Stephen and Greg Duncan. ReadHowYouWant’s award-winning conversion technology reformats existing books into high-quality alternative formats including, 16 to 24 point EasyRead large print, braille, e-books, and DAISY—a new talking book format that produces audio along with the written text.

Mel Cox, Head of Publishing Services at Random House Australia says, “We’re really excited to be working with ReadHowYouWant. This innovative technology assists those who have been previously unable to enjoy printed books. Random House Australia is delighted that our authors will now be available in more accessible formats for the enjoyment of all readers.” Random House Australia is part of the Random House Group, one of the largest publishing houses in the world. ReadHowYouWant will be working with Random House Australia on creating accessible formats of their recent front list titles, including three best-selling memoirs, Holy Cow, Salvation Creek, and Conviction of the Innocent.

ReadHowYouWant will be working with Murdoch Book’s imprint, Pier 9, which publishes an eclectic mix of travel, memoir, biography, popular history, and strong human-interest stories. "Murdoch Books is delighted to be able to make their books accessible to a broader range of people who would have previously been unable to read these titles in a standard format,” says Juliet Rogers, CEO of Murdoch Books.

ReadHowYouWant works with print-on-demand printer SOS print + media of Alexandria, NSW to print and ship books to readers. As well, ReadHowYouWant is working with James Bennett—Australia’s leading library supplier—to bring books to libraries in Australia and New Zealand.

In 2007, using an export grant from the Australian government to partly fund its expansion, ReadHowYouWant brought its services to the United States, and has begun partnering with such U.S. publishers as Wiley, Career Press, Barrett-Koehler, Free Spirit, and Rosen. Some best-selling titles from American publishers now available to Australian readers include, Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle, Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, and Being Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh. ReadHowYouWant’s online bookshop contains over 2,000 titles available in DAISY or braille files at www.readhowyouwant.com/australia.

“ReadHowYouWant’s goals are to make reading easier and more enjoyable by delivering formats that suit the reader, and to give people with reading difficulties access to books in the formats of their choice at an affordable price, and as soon as the book is published,” says ReadHowYouWant’s founder Christopher Stephen. For more information visit www.readhowyouwant.com/australia. To reach Mark Tanner, Publisher Relations Manager in our Sydney office, email mtanner@readhowyouwant.com or call +61 421 544 707.

“…the prescient folks at ReadHowYouWant [who] offer unabridged editions and [who] have a fine understanding of the fact that one size doesn’t fit all visually impaired readers. Brilliantly, they offer a variety of fonts and font sizes.”

—Sarah F. Gold, Publishers Weekly

New Marketing Agreement with ECPA

ECPA Enters Marketing Agreement with Read How You Want
Alternative Format Printing Opens New Market for Member Publishers

PHOENIX, AZ -- February 6, 2009 – Millions of people are not able to read their favorite books due to limited eyesight, medical conditions or learning disabilities. As the population ages, more and more people will be unable to read the text of the average book. The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) announces an agreement with Read How You Want (RHYW), a pioneering electronic publishing company based in Sydney, Australia. This agreement offers member publishers a chance to license their books in emerging and print-on demand formats for various reading needs.

Read How You Want provides customized book printing solutions in niche formats. RHYW takes the existing print-ready PDF version of any book and converts it to a wide variety of formats including DAISY text plus synchronized voice file, electronic Braille, EasyRead Large and Super Large print (for print on demand, customized books), as well as Kindle and other e-book formats. "RHYW " partners with publishers and converts their titles to standard e-book formats at very competetive rates. As part of that service they convert the titles to accessible formats for free, market the titles through their channels and provide a 50/50 net revenue stream to their publishing partners. For publishers not interested in e-book conversion services, RHYW will convert any book from PDF to the accessible formats at no charge, with an agreement to market and sell those formats for the publisher.

Especially for ECPA members, RHYW will create a separate page on its direct-to-consumer website dedicated to Christian titles. RHYW has a long-standing relationship with Amazon and will be able to increase the presence of these formats on this popular website.

“Read How You Want is reaching a growing market segment,” says Michael Covington, Information & Education Director for ECPA. “This new agreement means that an ECPA publisher can bring their books to this new market immediately at no additional cost. It’s a win for the consumer and the publisher.” For more information this incredible opportunity, visit RHYW’s website at http://www.readhowyouwant.com/pages_about/publishers.aspx

Read How You Want founder Christopher Stephen started the company in 2005 after working closely with his sister who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “It was heartbreaking to see her lose her ability to read because of her problems with eye tracking,” says Stephen. “We want to serve her and the millions like her around the world, providing quality books with life-changing and encouraging messages.”

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) is an international non-profit trade organization, comprised of nearly 200 member companies worldwide, representing a combined revenue of nearly $2 billion. Founded in 1974, ECPA is dedicated to serving the Christian publishing industry through equipping its members through cutting-edge technology, meaningful data, dynamic educational opportunity and unprecedented access to markets.

Fred's Head Companion: Read How You Want: in Braille or Large Print

Fred's Head Companion: Read How You Want: in Braille or Large Print

Another nice mention, this one from the APH.