Here's an article I came across today:
Opinion: Academic Publishing Is Broken | The Scientist
http://the-scientist.com/2012/03/19/opinion-academic-publishing-is-broken/
This started me thinking about what services publishers perform in
general. As this article points out, for the
At the risk of taking the side of the greedy publishers, I still wonder
where enough profits will exist to cover costs of updates and writing new
books if everyone wants free books. I wrote a book that I think is good. I
am still trying to find an agent to go the publisher route because it would
I think the fundamental problem is that the economies of scale are
collapsing. And I (tin foil hat in hand) tend to think it's a function
of population growth, resource depletion, and non-local homogenization
brought about by information technologies.
Music is a good example. The recent surge
It would be difficult for me, after having published ten books, to be
completely impartial when I review the business model of book publishing, but
perhaps I could summarize by saying these people figured out 1% - 99% long
before Wall Street. Information technologies only exacerbated what was
Why can't we dominate the whole book publishing industry by implementing
the books that we write as ebooks (format undefined) and giving them
away for free?
After all, books are software. They aren't programming, but they are
software. So why can't we implement an open source model for our
I think the problem is speculation in intellectual property, ie looking at
the potential windfall from owning a monopoly on a popular meme versus the
horatio-alger story of the hard work of authors and publishers being fairly
rewarded.
The base issue is that all the ways you can use ownership of
My thought was that there could be an intermediate ground that might be
more profitable for the authors and less expensive for the consumers.
Amazon built a tremendous business by eliminating store fronts.
So, I was thinking of what parts of the print publishers' current
functions could be
On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 2:10 PM, Joseph Spinden j...@qri.us wrote:
My thought was that there could be an intermediate ground that might be
more profitable for the authors and less expensive for the consumers.
Amazon built a tremendous business by eliminating store fronts.
So, I was
In order for the sort of system I am considering to work, there would
still be a need for intermediaries to edit and review, format, et
cetera, to ensure a high quality finished product.
I see no reason not to also have individuals/firms specializing in
marketing etextbooks, even for specific
I don't get it, or I just don't agree. Responding to Ropella
Similarly, why pay a bunch of money for a fossilized form
of knowledge from, say, an English cosmologist when I can chat with my
local cosmologist over a pint? which might have been a tongue in cheek
statement, ( it sure would have been
Owen, haven't sold enough via Kindle to tell. I was stunned--somebody informed
me on FB--that Machines Who Think sells for thirty bucks on Kindle! That seems
to me a good way of making sure none gets sold.
Pamela: some of your books come in Kindle versions. Do you have any insights
about
This has already been done. See, for instance, Amazon's CreateSpace
(previously known as BookSurge). There is also a competitor based in
Canada, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten. Both paper and
eBook is supported.
Editing, typesetting you can source yourself, or you can avail
yourself of
On Amazon my textbook sells for $85 and the Kindle edition for $80, so there
are almost no Kindle sales. Hard to explain the pricing.
Although pads may change this, students prefer to have paper versions of books.
One thing that at least some publishers are trying is to sell both version for
Following on the heels of the truly horrible Apple scheme for screwing
etextbook authors, here's another truly horrible Apple scheme for
screwing Macbook customers:
http://www.seattlerex.com/seattle-rex-vs-apple-the-verdict-is-in/
I gather this tale has gone viral.
Bruce
This might be a good time to mention Linux again, bitches.
Sorry, I've been catching up on Breaking Bad...
-Doug
Sent from Android.
On Apr 20, 2012 8:34 PM, Bruce Sherwood bruce.sherw...@gmail.com wrote:
Following on the heels of the truly horrible Apple scheme for screwing
etextbook
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