Publishers and Merchants: To insure that the products you publish or resell are included on this site, please arrange to provide a “datafeed” that provides the following information for each product (SKU) that you offer:

Required Information:

• Literature Title (e.g. “Invisible Man”)
• Literature Author (e.g. “H. G. Wells” or “Ralph Ellison”)
• Product Title (e.g. “Invisible Man: A Teacher’s Manual”)
• Publisher (do not list yourself as the publisher of a work that you merely resell)
• Merchant name
• Link URL for the product-information or “buy” web page. This URL should be for the specific product, not for a category or list of many products.
• Price for each version offered (e.g. Print, CD-ROM, PDF download, enhanced-PDF, editable documents, software, bundles with audio or DVD, etc.) For free items, the price should be either zero or “free” (not blank).

Desired (Optional) Information:

• Product Author (and/or Editor, Illustrator, Translator). Clearly identify each distinct role!
• URL for a thumbnail image
• URL for a PDF “sample” of the specific work, if offered
• Length (number of pages, or number of days or weeks of instruction)
• Grade Level (e.g. “Grade 7,” “Grades 2-4,” “High School”)
• isbn-10, isbn-13, and/or UPC
• Publisher’s SKU(s), Merchant’s SKU(s)
• Product Description (specific details, not flowery language or vague praise).

Some Preferences and Suggestions:

• I prefer to receive any “person-names” as separate “first-name” and “last-name” fields (especially for your “product author”).
• I prefer to store title-prefixes (A, An, The) as a separate field from the rest of a title, but this problem is easy to deal with.
• Please do not rename other publisher’s products which you resell.
• Czech you’re speling (“Dairy of a Young Girl,” “Elie Weisel,” “Julius Ceasar“).
• Please don’t truncate or compact literature titles (“Lion Witch Wardrobe” or “Huck Finn“).
• Be very clear in identifying the contents of your products.
• Be very careful in identifying any works which have similar or identical titles:
  • The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells) or Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison)
  • Monster (by Walter Dean Myers, or by Christopher Pike, or Jonathan Kellerman)
  • Hamlet (Shakespeare’s tragedy), or The Hamlet by William Faulkner
  • Ulysses (by James Joyce) or The Adventures of Ulysses (by Bernard Evslin) or The Odyssey (by Homer, translated by…)
  • Beowulf, the epic poem, or Beowulf: A New Telling (by Robert Nye)
• Also be careful when identifying persons’ roles:
  • Harper Lee wrote the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Horton Foote wrote the screeplay adaptation.
  • Don’t identify an editor, illustrator, or translator as the “author” of a work.
  • Make clear if your materials are related to an adapatation (e.g. the commonly-anthologized play about Anne Frank is not the same thing as her autobiography), an excerpt, or an abridged version of a work.
• Be specific for “series” literature:
  • There is no book called Harry Potter; identify the specific book(s) which your materials cover.
  • Is your study guide about The Fellowship of the Ring (a single novel) or is it about “Lord of the Rings” (the trilogy)? Might it also cover The Hobbit (the prequel)?
  • Does your Literature Circle Guide cover Twilight (a single novel) or all four “Twilight” books?
• Identify all literary works that are “covered” by a product (but don’t include works that are merely mentioned).

I can accept datafeeds in a variety of formats, including text files (comma, tab, or pipe-delimited) or an Excel spreadsheet. I would always prefer to receive data in a format that you regularly use, so you’ll be able to send me updates without any extra work or delay.

5 Responses to “Publishers and Merchants: Please Provide a Datafeed”

1. Margaret Whisnant says:

   January 27, 2011 at 4:14 pm

   Some of my teaching material is already listed on your site through my store on TeachersPayTeachers. I would like to list the rest from my website at takinggrades.com. Please let me know what I need to do.

   Reply
   • markwelch says:

     January 27, 2011 at 4:43 pm

     The easiest way is to send me a file (to markwelch@markwelch.com) that includes as much of the data (listed above) as you can easily provide, clearly organized.

     Reply
2. Erica Warren says:

   February 12, 2011 at 3:00 pm

   Can I just send you the information for each product listed in a words or pdf file?

   Reply
   • markwelch says:

     February 12, 2011 at 3:48 pm

     The information must be in a clear format that I can easily import into Microsoft Excel, so that I can merge it into my database.

     Reply
3. Mark Welch says:

   October 1, 2011 at 12:30 pm

   For more advice for education-product sellers, see “Mistakes that Lesson-Plan Sellers Make.”

   Reply