On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 09:25, Carcharoth <carcharot...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Sep 13, 2011 at 2:18 PM, Sarah <slimvir...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I've never understood how academic publishers view these issues. I >> have friends who had their PhDs published by their university presses >> -- at universities financed by taxpayers -- and the prices seemed >> self-defeating -- £70 sterling for a relatively short book on a >> minority issue. The publishers' argument is that it's a short print >> run, so the price per unit has to be high, but the reason they can >> only print a small number is they've determined in advance that no one >> can afford to buy it. >> >> So it turns into almost vanity publishing, where the only people who >> buy the books are extended family and friends, and the occasional >> library if you're lucky. In the meantime, the rest of the world is >> effectively locked out of this knowledge. It's an odd mindset for >> educators to have. > > I have bought expensive academic books in the past, but never actual > published PhD theses. I would expect someone to rewrite, extend and > expand on their PhD thesis to make it suitable for a wider readership > before publishing it and expecting people to buy it. Many of the books > I've bought that have been expensive academic ones state that they are > based on, or are an extension of the author(s) PhD work or other > thesis work. I was also under the impression that PhD theses are > printed and bound to go into a library, not really for sale, so I'm > not sure what point is being made here. A PhD thesis and a book are > different things.
Hi, sorry, I meant they had turned the PhD thesis into a book, not that they simply published the thesis itself. Sarah _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
