difficulties in publishing plays

[Angela Rebeiro]

In Canada the ISBN is free, as is Cataloguing in Publication.  The only 
cost, if one wants to consider it a cost, because most countries to my 
knowledge demand
that copies of books are deposited at the national library or some such 
institution. In Canada it's the National Library and Archives.  in 
fact, I'd be surprised if this is not
true of most or all countries in the West.
Angela Rebeiro
Playwrights Canada Press
215 Spadina Avenue
Suite 230
Toronto, Ontario
M5T 2C7
(416) 703-0013
(416) 408-3402 FAX

On Jan 16, 2008, at 4:26 PM, Louise . Forsyth wrote:

>
> Dear colleague,
>  
> The cost of publishing plays in China is shocking!! Are there similar 
> costs in staging foreign plays? Am I not right in thinking that the 
> cost of obtaining an ISBN number in North America is minimal?
>  
> Louise Forsyth
>  
>
> From: Canadian Theatre Reserach [mailto:CANDRAMA at LISTSERV.UNB.CA] On 
> Behalf Of ??
> Sent: January 14, 2008 18:19
> To: CANDRAMA at LISTSERV.UNB.CA
> Subject: difficulties in publishing plays
>  
>  
>  
> Yes, it's quite important to publish plays. I think this is also true 
> in China. But perhaps you don't know how difficult to publish a play 
> in China. The most difficult part is the cost barrier.As you know, 
> every book must have an ISBN,right? But publishers will usually charge 
> the author about 2000 US$ for that number (it's not cheap in China). 
> Together with some other charges like 'editing fee(700 us$)', printing 
> fee(starting from mim of 2000 copies in general so of 2700-3000 us$), 
> the total publishing fee for a play of 200,000 words will reach up to 
> 5400-6000 us$). Probably the publisher will say 'This kind of stuff 
> will not sell well in the market and so you will almost publish 
> yourself--, that is, you pay all the fee. I feel sad about this.
>  
> You may ask "Why could not you get support from the government? from 
> the university?
> Well, that seems to be a good idea. But not in China. If you know how 
> many routines you have to go through and how many people you have 
> to beg for a drop of water, you will mostly just give up trying!
>  
> And I am not adding royalties here.!!
>  
> How much does it cost to publish a play in Canada?
>  
> If I can solve this problem, I will be more willing to translate and 
> introduce Canadian plays to China....
>  
>  
>  
> Dachuan Lu
> School of Foreign Languages
> Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
> 100083, Beijing
> dclu at yeah.net
>  
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 5368 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://artsservices.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/candrama/attachments/20080116/d356f54c/attachment.bin>