LibraryThing for Publishers, our new program to bring publishers into LibraryThing—and link out to them—has been growing rapidly, and we’ve added a number of new features for both publishers and members.

New Publishers. Since Monday we’ve added 21 new publishers, amounting to an 800% increase in books covered.

The largest new publisher is Penguin Australia, covering 650,000 member books. Their titles include books from Penguin USA, UK, India, New Zealand and DK (Dorling Kindersley) available through the Penguin Australia website. (Their wonderful profile image—an unofficial logo?—appear to the right.)

Others include (in copies order):

• The substantial Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, producer of “intellectual and literary books on ethics, theology, biblical studies, and social issues, as well as Bible commentaries and dictionaries” and their children’s imprint, Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.
• Candlewick Press, an innovative children’s publisher. My son is exceedingly fond of their Owl Babies.
• Beacon Press, publisher of serious fiction and non-fiction, such as Cornel West’s Race Matters.
• Bethany House, a popular publisher of christian fiction, by authors such as Beverly Lewis.
• Chosen Books, who publish non-fiction for evangelical and charismatic readers.
• Canongate Books, an independent publisher based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Canongate’s titles include Pullman’s new The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.
• Gefen Publishing House, based in Jerusalem and frequent Early Reviewers participant.
• The Rand Corporation, the publishing arm of the influential think tank
• Mercer University Press, our first UP, and dear to my heart for offering to send me a Coptic Grammar.
• Belle Books, a Memphis, TN small press and LibraryThing Early Reviewers favorite.
• Belial’ Editions, our first French publisher, who release science fiction and fantasy.

And eight more independents. A half-dozen substantial publishers are waiting in the wings, as we work out URLs and other details.

New Features. I introduced a new page for you to compare your books against LibraryThing Publishers.

Check out the blog post.

New ways to upload. Publishers have complained about the limitations of ISBN-based URLs, so we’re expanding the formats we accept, starting with a new “LibraryThing Simple Format.” Basically, we can now read any spreadsheet that contains both ISBNs and URLs. We’ll figure out the rest. This proved necessary in getting RAND’s titles into the system, and was helpful for Mercer UP as well.

I’ve written more about this format on Thingology.