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An individual covered by or significantly related to this article, FiledByAuthor, has edited Fan History as
173.10.210.213 (talk · contribs) . This user's editing has included this article.

[edit] Introduction

FiledByAuthor is a site about author that strives to be the publishing version of IMDB. The site has a number of publishing partners. They include Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, The Perseus Books Group and Wiley. [1]

[edit] The Maintainers

The following information is a quote from FiledByAuthor's website:

FiledBy, Inc is a digital marketing company providing membership sites, web tools and community building solutions to content Creators - authors, writers, illustrators and photographers – and their fans. The Company, based in Nashville, TN, has launched its flagship site, filedbyauthor, the most comprehensive online marketing platform and directory of published author web pages on the Internet. [2]

Filedbyauthor is now in Beta. Any author with a book published in the U.S. or Canada can join for free, claim their page, check for accuracy, provide corrections and enhance their pages.[3]

FiledBy was co-founded by Peter Clifton and Mike Shatzkin. Both Peter and Mike share a passion for authors, artists and their work and have spent many years in the publishing and media businesses. The company was started to provide every author with the tools to market successfully on the web. [4]

[edit] History

On October 3, 2007, the domain for the site was registered. [5]

On March 25, 2009, FiledByAuthor published a press release announcing their public beta launch. [6]

In March 2009, the site made news for what were viewed as the controversial policy of creating articles about authors with out their permission and then charging the authors money to take full control of the profiles about themselves on FiledByAuthor. [7]

Among the authors upset by this were Cleolinda Jones who made a number of tweets about it. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

[edit] Size

When the site was first launched in March 2009, it had articles about 1.8 million authors. According to Quantcast, Compete and Alexa, the site had no measurable traffic at the time of launch. As of March 29, 2009, Quarkbase said the site had 13 bookmarks at Delicious, 0 pages posted on Digg, 0 pages posted on Reddit, 0 page references from Yahoo! Answers, 0 blog reactions from Technorati, 0 inbound links from Wikipedia, 0 pages made to the first page of Digg, 2 comments on StumbleUpon and 0 inbound links from Google Groups. [18]

[edit] Policies

[edit] Opting out

According to the L.A. Times,

There is literally no way for an author to go to the site and elect not to participate. But what do authors with large online followings -- John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow, for instance -- who already control their Internet presence (and have been nurturing their online audiences for years) need with this service? What author would want FiledByAuthor's SEO efforts -- putting authors at the top of search engines is a big part of their sell -- to work to promote the FiledByAuthor page, rather than their own site? [19]

As of March 31, 2009, FiledByAuthor does not address that issue specifically. They do say the following:

If the books associated with your page are incomplete or inaccurate or if there is a missing cover image, send us an email. Be sure to include the 10 or 13 digit ISBNs for your published books, the correct title, publisher and any additional information you can supply. [20]

and

If you’ve published a book in the U.S. or Canada, or if your book was imported into the U.S. or Canada and appears on our site, you can register and claim your author page here.

Our easy registration screens guide you through creating an account, finding the records that match your name and work s and claiming your author page (s). There are more than 1.8 million pre-assembled author pages in the directory.

Once registered, you may update your author page by adding a photo, your biography, embed a video clip, podcast or file and add links to other sites. You can also correct inaccuracies that could exist. Low cost, membership upgrades are available to expand the range of tools that support your online marketing efforts.[21]

In the comments of the L.A. Times blog post, this policy has been compared to the one regarding trying to opt out of IMDB. [22]

On April 1st 2009, FiledBy addresses specific issues, saying:

Our website takes a novel approach of organizing online communities around the author rather than around the individual books. We also offer the author the ability to control how the data is presented. We believe that authors who understand our approach will see it as a complement to their existing online presence rather than a competitor. We will work in good faith to reach a resolution with those who do not wish to have their books or profile listed on filedbyauthor.

Full article available at - http://www.filedbyblog.com/2009/04/01/filedby-works-with-licensed-book-industry-data-working-with-authors-and-improving-it/