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On 5/15/16 7:15 PM, DW via Marxism wrote:
Well...my understanding is that Brill's target audience are institutions
and not individuals.
That's exactly right--the same marketing strategy of all academic
publishers as this piquant Guardian article points out:
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/sep/04/academics-are-being-hoodwinked-into-writing-books-nobody-can-buy
Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy
An editor called me up to ask me if I’d like to write a book. I smelled
a rat, but I played along…
by Anonymous academic, September 2015
A few months ago, an editor from an academic publisher got in touch to
ask if I was interested in writing a book for them.
I’ve ignored these requests in the past. I know of too many colleagues
who have responded to such invitations, only to see their books
disappear on to a university library shelf in a distant corner of the world.
If someone tried to buy said book – I mean, like a real human being –
they would have to pay the equivalent of a return ticket to a sunny
destination or a month’s child benefit. These books start at around £60,
but they can cost double that, or even more.
This time, however, I decided to play along.
So I got the editor on the phone and he asked if I had an idea for them.
“Sure,” I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “Perhaps I could write a
book about…” – and here I started piling up ugly-sounding buzzwords.
I could hear how he momentarily drifted off, probably to reply to an
email, and when I was done with my terrible pitch, he simply said: “Great!”
“The best thing now,” he continued, “is if you could jot down a few
pages, as a proposal, which we could then send out to reviewers.” He
paused a second, then added: “If you have any friends who could act as
reviewers and who you think could sign off on the project, then that’d
be great.”
I was intrigued by the frankness.
“How much would the book be sold for?” I inquired, aware this might not
be his favourite question. “£80,” he replied in a low voice.
“So there won’t be a cheaper paperback edition?” I asked, pretending to
sound disappointed.
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“No, I’m afraid not,” he said, “we only really sell to libraries. But we
do have great sales reps that get the books into universities all across
the world.”
“So how many copies do you usually sell?” I inquired.
“About 300.”
“For all your books?”
“Yes, unless you would assign your book on your own modules.”
I was growing fascinated by the numbers so I asked how many of these
books they published each year.
“I have to…” he started (inadvertently revealing that this was a target
that had been set) “…I have to publish around 75 of these.”
Seventy-five books, £80 each, selling on average 300 copies. That’s
£1.8m. And he’s just one of their commissioning editors. What’s more,
these publishers are not known for hiring talented illustrators to come
up with nice covers – and you rarely see their books advertised in
magazines.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” I said as our conversation drew to a
close, “how did you find me?”
A moment of awkward silence, and then: “Um, well, I found your name on
your university website.”
At the time, there was no information about me on the university
website. No publication list, no information about my research interest,
not even a photograph.
So I’d been asked to write a book about whatever I wanted, and this
editor didn’t even know whether I’d written anything before. It didn’t
matter. It would sell its 300 copies regardless. Not to people with an
interest in reading the book, but to librarians who would put it on a
shelf and then, a few years later, probably bury it in a storeroom.
Most academics get these requests. A colleague was recently courted by
an editor who, after confessing they only published expensive hardbacks
(at around £200), explained that this was an opportunity for my
colleague to enhance his academic record. He was told he could give them
pretty much anything, like an old report, or some old articles.
“I can’t believe anyone would write a book that would be too expensive
for anyone to buy,” the colleague told me over the phone. “Just to add a
line to your cv.”
Another colleague, on discovering his published book was getting
widespread attention but was too expensive to buy, tried to get the
publishers to rush out a cheaper paperback version. They ignored his
request.
These may sound like stories of concern to academics alone. But the
problem is this: much of the time that goes into writing these books is
made possible through taxpayers’ money. And who buys these books? Well,
university libraries – and they, too, are paid for by taxpayers.
Meanwhile, the books are not available for taxpayers to read – unless
they have a university library card.
In the US, taxpayers are said to be spending $139bn a year on research,
and in the UK, £4.7bn. Too much of that money is disappearing into big
pockets.
So what are the alternatives? We could stop publishing these books
altogether - which may be advisable in a time of hysterical mass
publication . Or we publish only with decent publishers, who believe
that books are meant to be read and not simply profited from. And if
it’s only a matter of making research available, then of course there’s
open source publishing, which most academics are aware of by now.
So why don’t academics simply stay away from the greedy publishers? The
only answer I can think of is vanity.
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