Dear Publisher
This is the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries, writing to you to state that you must now send us five copies of your latest publication. This is a legal requirement - - so no shirking!
The ALDL is the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries
Be not amazed to feel melancholy. This is history. The dull notation of record is often one of the best things that happens to your book!
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I sometimes meet people who don't give up their requested 5 copies to the ALDL. They see the ALDL as freeloading off of them, and I always disagree!
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The attached request was for John Herdman's IMELDA - - the exact request number being as follows: ACQ: 4817417
Bodleian Library, Oxford
The Cambridge University Library
National Library of Scotland
Natioanl Library of Wales
Trinity College Dublin
I notice the odd-one-out here. One is not in the UK. I do not know how that works.
John Herdman told me that Trinity Library is considered by some fuddy-duddies and other high academic or cultural echelon types, to be a last outpost of the British Empire; which is amazing as that dates back to 1916.
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I wonder, what do Amazon, and Lulu do?
Amazon must simply have a conveyer belt operated by a large button printed with the word GO! on it - - - a conveyer belt leading right to the ALDL.
All of us writers can say we are 'in the Bodleian' I suppose! This will be handy at the great dinner-party in the sky.
Peter Burnett