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Book publishing advice needed

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Jochen Fromm-5

Book publishing advice needed

At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.

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Tom Johnson

Re: Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:

The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions. It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally, there is <a href="https://www.bookbaby.com/free-publishing-guides?utm_campaign=GOOSL31&utm_source=SITELINK&utm_medium=cpc&mkwid=sNzCXe5z8_dc|pcrid|238281756657|pmt|e|pkw|amazon%20book%20publishing|slid|cWU1oXIv|targetids|kwd-362938383597|groupid|48812614458|&pgrid=48812614458&ptaid=kwd-362938383597&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0YD4BRD2ARIsAHwmKVnFci42apQ6vWUruvHuYX-FOum9VCF7bx83c_tSMHGoby8yylL_RTMaAjOEEALw_wcB">Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc

Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data

============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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thompnickson2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

Tom,

This information is so interesting. Thanks for providing it. Apparently the industry has really changed since my books were published. Publisher’s contracts are awful and even then I had to markup the contracts they sent me extensively before I could sign them. When I went to publish our textbook with my own father’s company, the provisions of the contract they sent me implied that if the pressman dropped a wrench on his foot during the run of my book, I was liable. They cheerfully accepted all my contract changes, but I had to hire a lawyer to read the damned thing, and it was thorough=going pain in the ass. I wonder if publishers have not out=lived their usefulness.

Your note seems to imply that you have been quietly publishing tome after tome all the time I have known you. Ask your publicist to send me a list. (};-)].

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 12:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:

The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc

Tom

============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Jochen Fromm-5

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Tom Johnson

Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.

-J.

-------- Original message --------

From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:

The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc

Tom

============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Tom Johnson

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Tom Johnson

Another advantage of self-publishing is that you retain the copyright. Ergo, you can license it to a publisher for an updated edition or just distribution.

Tom

============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 2:25 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:
The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions. It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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thompnickson2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

At the very list, the contract should explicitly say that rights revert to the author when the publisher no longer maintains the book in print and promotes it. I often edited my magazine contracts to give only first rights. I agree with Tom, that copyright should stay with the author.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 2:32 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Another advantage of self-publishing is that you retain the copyright. Ergo, you can license it to a publisher for an updated edition or just distribution.

Tom

============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 2:25 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:
The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions. It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Tom Johnson

My self-published memoir sold over 100 copies. I doubt that it has been cited since it's not a scholarly work. At this point I get annoyed when Amazon sends me a royalty payment because it means I have to pay taxes to New Mexico. Paying is no problem but filing is.

Anyway Amazon (KDP) did the printing, no lawyers, no copyright issues, I can order author's copies any time. I'd do it again.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020, 2:25 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:
The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions. It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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Jacqueline Kazil

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

I wrote a book with a major publisher and got 15% (if memory serves me right).

If I did it again, I would self publish and pay for a freelance editor.

The value really depends on your intended audience. My guess is your book niche and you will be able to navigate distribution better than a publisher.

I would double down on the investment in a freelance editor to help you polish and pull it together. (My guess is that while you might write well, you are not a professional editor.)

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

I hired an Amazon editor. She said, I say boastfully, "There were virtually no spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors so let's talk about structural issues..."

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020, 3:05 PM Jacqueline Kazil <[hidden email]> wrote:

I wrote a book with a major publisher and got 15% (if memory serves me right).

If I did it again, I would self publish and pay for a freelance editor.

The value really depends on your intended audience. My guess is your book niche and you will be able to navigate distribution better than a publisher.

I would double down on the investment in a freelance editor to help you polish and pull it together. (My guess is that while you might write well, you are not a professional editor.)

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thompnickson2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

That’s impressive, Frank.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 3:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

I hired an Amazon editor. She said, I say boastfully, "There were virtually no spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors so let's talk about structural issues..."

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020, 3:05 PM Jacqueline Kazil <[hidden email]> wrote:

I wrote a book with a major publisher and got 15% (if memory serves me right).

If I did it again, I would self publish and pay for a freelance editor.

The value really depends on your intended audience. My guess is your book niche and you will be able to navigate distribution better than a publisher.

I would double down on the investment in a freelance editor to help you polish and pull it together. (My guess is that while you might write well, you are not a professional editor.)

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Edward Angel

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-5

I’ve been a book author since 1972 and a textbook author since 1989. My computer graphics textbook has been the most popular book in the area for 20 years and just came out in its eighth edition with various editions being available in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian. Sadly, the book business has changed over that time; changed in way that is bad for almost everyone, especially authors. I think you’re faced with a lot of bad choices. I hope some of the following will prove helpful. And if not helpful, at least interesting.

Before I forget, you might enjoy reading of my adventures writing the first edition of my present textbook while on sabbatical in Venezuela, Ecuador, Hong Kong and Nepal. There’s a pointer to it on my home page www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

When I had to pick a publisher, I knew the editors and local book reps at Academic Press, Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall and Benjamin/Cummings. They dominated the CS field and did so largely because they had editors who knew the field, excellent book reps who knew the needs of the faculty and students, a willingness to invest in a book, and in-house production. None of these exist anymore and, as Tom pointed out, you're largely on your own. It’s unfortunate if you care about how many copies get sold and your royalties. I have many friends who self-published in the past. It’s a lot of work either way but I prefer to put my effort into content and not type-setting or marketing. None of my self-published friends have ever sold many books.

I had three excellent editors over 20 years. When I did my first edition, my editor hired a development editor at great expense to improve the quality of my writing. She worked with the CS faculty and grad students at Caltech and Stanford. It made a huge difference. Now almost none of these jobs exist within the publishers. All production is contracted out to the low bidders (art, typesetting, copy editing, etc) most of whom are in India. I no longer have an editor. There is one person working for the publusher with whom I communicate with to try to get things done correctly with the contractors. This last edition has been a long painful experience.

So what happened? Books were always expensive for students, especially when sold through college bookstores. Then used book sellers appeared and Asian students started importing low cost Asian versions of the standard textbooks. Under US copyright laws, both are legal. The publishers responded by upping prices which reduced sales even more.

And then came electronic media. At first, my book, like most others, was still print-only. But the publisher sent perfect unwatermarked pdfs to all the schools what adopted the book for use by students with special needs. Wasn’t long before those pdfs made it to the Web. Then they had a electronic version and a kindle version that students could rent for a semester or year. The publisher, the largest in the business, was clueless about web security and had no idea that Kindles are not secure. Very quickly, the book appeared (with most of the other cs texts and various best sellers) on a Russian website as a “public service.” End of paid sales.

The new edition is only available in electronic form and the publisher claims it is only available on a secure site. I doubt anyone on this list believes that.

Although I never in the past had issues with the publisher having the copyright, which was pretty standard, I wish I had it now. Since there is no hope of making significant royalties now (we used), my coauthor and I would like to put the book out for free on our websites rather than having it appear on various illegal Russian sites known to most students.

Personally, I no longer care about royalties but the long term issue I worry about is why would any young person write a textbook. It’s a huge amount of work and usually not something that in the academic world is valued as highly as research papers and grant funding.

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jul 4, 2020, at 2:25 PM, Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:
The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions. It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally, there is <a href="https://www.bookbaby.com/free-publishing-guides?utm_campaign=GOOSL31&utm_source=SITELINK&utm_medium=cpc&mkwid=sNzCXe5z8_dc|pcrid|238281756657|pmt|e|pkw|amazon%20book%20publishing|slid|cWU1oXIv|targetids|kwd-362938383597|groupid|48812614458|&pgrid=48812614458&ptaid=kwd-362938383597&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0YD4BRD2ARIsAHwmKVnFci42apQ6vWUruvHuYX-FOum9VCF7bx83c_tSMHGoby8yylL_RTMaAjOEEALw_wcB" class="">Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

<a href="x-msg://8/#DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2" width="1" height="1" class="">

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
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Stephen Guerin-5

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 3:09 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

I hired an Amazon editor. She said, I say boastfully, "There were virtually no spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors so let's talk about structural issues..."

Insert period before three trailing ellipsis points. How much did you pay your Amazon editor? ;-p

MLA style places the sentence-terminating period immediately after the last word of the quotation, even though a period does not occur there in the original material. The three ellipsis points are then placed after this sentence-terminating period.

eg

Thoreau argues that by simplifying one’s life, “the laws of the universe will appear less complex. . . .”

thompnickson2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

And I’M the person on this list who has a reputation for being rhetorically picky!!!!????

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 5:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 3:09 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:

I hired an Amazon editor. She said, I say boastfully, "There were virtually no spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors so let's talk about structural issues..."

Insert period before three trailing ellipsis points. How much did you pay your Amazon editor? ;-p

MLA style places the sentence-terminating period immediately after the last word of the quotation, even though a period does not occur there in the original material. The three ellipsis points are then placed after this sentence-terminating period.

eg

Thoreau argues that by simplifying one’s life, “the laws of the universe will appear less complex. . . .”

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Stephen Guerin-5

I was more careful when submitting the book. I always used the Oxford comma, for instance.

But thanks.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020, 5:06 PM Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 3:09 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> wrote:
I hired an Amazon editor. She said, I say boastfully, "There were virtually no spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors so let's talk about structural issues..."

Insert period before three trailing ellipsis points. How much did you pay your Amazon editor? ;-p

MLA style places the sentence-terminating period immediately after the last word of the quotation, even though a period does not occur there in the original material. The three ellipsis points are then placed after this sentence-terminating period.

eg
Thoreau argues that by simplifying one’s life, “the laws of the universe will appear less complex. . . .”

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Stephen Guerin-5

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Edward Angel

Ed,

I just ordered your 8th edition from Pearson as I was blown away by the awesomeness of the new cover. :-)

The confirmation email tells me a *physical* access card is being shipped for my digital order.

First time I've seen this - are physical access cards for digital products common for textbooks these days? I just thought it was lazy programming in the shopping cart requiring a physical address for a digital product.

I have an urgent need to use your book this weekend and can not wait for delivery. I will be calling the author directly while I await arrival :-) It actually has to do with implementing the cover and getting the decentralized capture and rendering to realtime which hinges on realtime depth-image based rendering using spherical light fields while skipping any 3D cartesian intermediate shenanigans. Thank you for your help so far!

-S

PS, I also checked out Amazon and they appear to be the same with the physical card.

PPS: 8th edition isn't the default choice edition on Amazon or Pearson when searching.

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 3:22 PM Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:

I’ve been a book author since 1972 and a textbook author since 1989. My computer graphics textbook has been the most popular book in the area for 20 years and just came out in its eighth edition with various editions being available in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian. Sadly, the book business has changed over that time; changed in way that is bad for almost everyone, especially authors. I think you’re faced with a lot of bad choices. I hope some of the following will prove helpful. And if not helpful, at least interesting.

Before I forget, you might enjoy reading of my adventures writing the first edition of my present textbook while on sabbatical in Venezuela, Ecuador, Hong Kong and Nepal. There’s a pointer to it on my home page www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

When I had to pick a publisher, I knew the editors and local book reps at Academic Press, Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall and Benjamin/Cummings. They dominated the CS field and did so largely because they had editors who knew the field, excellent book reps who knew the needs of the faculty and students, a willingness to invest in a book, and in-house production. None of these exist anymore and, as Tom pointed out, you're largely on your own. It’s unfortunate if you care about how many copies get sold and your royalties. I have many friends who self-published in the past. It’s a lot of work either way but I prefer to put my effort into content and not type-setting or marketing. None of my self-published friends have ever sold many books.

I had three excellent editors over 20 years. When I did my first edition, my editor hired a development editor at great expense to improve the quality of my writing. She worked with the CS faculty and grad students at Caltech and Stanford. It made a huge difference. Now almost none of these jobs exist within the publishers. All production is contracted out to the low bidders (art, typesetting, copy editing, etc) most of whom are in India. I no longer have an editor. There is one person working for the publusher with whom I communicate with to try to get things done correctly with the contractors. This last edition has been a long painful experience.

So what happened? Books were always expensive for students, especially when sold through college bookstores. Then used book sellers appeared and Asian students started importing low cost Asian versions of the standard textbooks. Under US copyright laws, both are legal. The publishers responded by upping prices which reduced sales even more.

And then came electronic media. At first, my book, like most others, was still print-only. But the publisher sent perfect unwatermarked pdfs to all the schools what adopted the book for use by students with special needs. Wasn’t long before those pdfs made it to the Web. Then they had a electronic version and a kindle version that students could rent for a semester or year. The publisher, the largest in the business, was clueless about web security and had no idea that Kindles are not secure. Very quickly, the book appeared (with most of the other cs texts and various best sellers) on a Russian website as a “public service.” End of paid sales.

The new edition is only available in electronic form and the publisher claims it is only available on a secure site. I doubt anyone on this list believes that.

Although I never in the past had issues with the publisher having the copyright, which was pretty standard, I wish I had it now. Since there is no hope of making significant royalties now (we used), my coauthor and I would like to put the book out for free on our websites rather than having it appear on various illegal Russian sites known to most students.

Personally, I no longer care about royalties but the long term issue I worry about is why would any young person write a textbook. It’s a huge amount of work and usually not something that in the academic world is valued as highly as research papers and grant funding.

Ed

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

Edward Angel

Re: Book publishing advice needed

Let me know what you need this weekend.

I don’t have a card whatever that is but it seems like another doomed effort to prevent unauthorized copies. There are some good aspect to the eversion, some of which they denied would work while we were doing the book.

I finally got a login from Pearson so I see my own work. Took a long time to get them to give it to me.

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jul 4, 2020, at 5:47 PM, Stephen Guerin <[hidden email]> wrote:

Ed,

I just ordered your 8th edition from Pearson as I was blown away by the awesomeness of the new cover. :-)

The confirmation email tells me a *physical* access card is being shipped for my digital order.

First time I've seen this - are physical access cards for digital products common for textbooks these days? I just thought it was lazy programming in the shopping cart requiring a physical address for a digital product.

I have an urgent need to use your book this weekend and can not wait for delivery. I will be calling the author directly while I await arrival :-) It actually has to do with implementing the cover and getting the decentralized capture and rendering to realtime which hinges on realtime depth-image based rendering using spherical light fields while skipping any 3D cartesian intermediate shenanigans. Thank you for your help so far!

-S

PS, I also checked out Amazon and they appear to be the same with the physical card.

PPS: 8th edition isn't the default choice edition on Amazon or Pearson when searching.

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 3:22 PM Edward Angel <[hidden email]> wrote:
I’ve been a book author since 1972 and a textbook author since 1989. My computer graphics textbook has been the most popular book in the area for 20 years and just came out in its eighth edition with various editions being available in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian. Sadly, the book business has changed over that time; changed in way that is bad for almost everyone, especially authors. I think you’re faced with a lot of bad choices. I hope some of the following will prove helpful. And if not helpful, at least interesting.

Before I forget, you might enjoy reading of my adventures writing the first edition of my present textbook while on sabbatical in Venezuela, Ecuador, Hong Kong and Nepal. There’s a pointer to it on my home page www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

When I had to pick a publisher, I knew the editors and local book reps at Academic Press, Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall and Benjamin/Cummings. They dominated the CS field and did so largely because they had editors who knew the field, excellent book reps who knew the needs of the faculty and students, a willingness to invest in a book, and in-house production. None of these exist anymore and, as Tom pointed out, you're largely on your own. It’s unfortunate if you care about how many copies get sold and your royalties. I have many friends who self-published in the past. It’s a lot of work either way but I prefer to put my effort into content and not type-setting or marketing. None of my self-published friends have ever sold many books.

I had three excellent editors over 20 years. When I did my first edition, my editor hired a development editor at great expense to improve the quality of my writing. She worked with the CS faculty and grad students at Caltech and Stanford. It made a huge difference. Now almost none of these jobs exist within the publishers. All production is contracted out to the low bidders (art, typesetting, copy editing, etc) most of whom are in India. I no longer have an editor. There is one person working for the publusher with whom I communicate with to try to get things done correctly with the contractors. This last edition has been a long painful experience.

So what happened? Books were always expensive for students, especially when sold through college bookstores. Then used book sellers appeared and Asian students started importing low cost Asian versions of the standard textbooks. Under US copyright laws, both are legal. The publishers responded by upping prices which reduced sales even more.

And then came electronic media. At first, my book, like most others, was still print-only. But the publisher sent perfect unwatermarked pdfs to all the schools what adopted the book for use by students with special needs. Wasn’t long before those pdfs made it to the Web. Then they had a electronic version and a kindle version that students could rent for a semester or year. The publisher, the largest in the business, was clueless about web security and had no idea that Kindles are not secure. Very quickly, the book appeared (with most of the other cs texts and various best sellers) on a Russian website as a “public service.” End of paid sales.

The new edition is only available in electronic form and the publisher claims it is only available on a secure site. I doubt anyone on this list believes that.

Although I never in the past had issues with the publisher having the copyright, which was pretty standard, I wish I had it now. Since there is no hope of making significant royalties now (we used), my coauthor and I would like to put the book out for free on our websites rather than having it appear on various illegal Russian sites known to most students.

Personally, I no longer care about royalties but the long term issue I worry about is why would any young person write a textbook. It’s a huge amount of work and usually not something that in the academic world is valued as highly as research papers and grant funding.

Ed

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]
505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

Eric Charles-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick said " the contract should explicitly say that rights revert to the author when the publisher no longer maintains the book in print and promotes it."

I handwrote that into the contract for the book on New Realism (presumably based on a suggestion from you). Alas, that's an almost nonsensical insertion at this point. The company will maintain a website that lists the book indefinitely, with it available for purchase from various marketplaces such as Amazon and Google books. So it is "maintained" and "promoted", at no cost, in perpetuity, and is always available, because books can now easily be printed on demand in single copy. I expect nowadays it might make more sense to say something like: "If the book sells no copies in X years, in any medium supported by the publisher, then the rights revert to the author."

It has been nine years, and the book still hasn't sold enough copies for me to see a penny.

If I were writing a novel I would definitely either self publish or find a firm that focuses on online publishing, and which returns a definite marketing plan in return for their cut (there are firms that focus on kickstarting novels, or other internet forums, for example).

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 4:46 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

At the very list, the contract should explicitly say that rights revert to the author when the publisher no longer maintains the book in print and promotes it. I often edited my magazine contracts to give only first rights. I agree with Tom, that copyright should stay with the author.

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 2:32 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Another advantage of self-publishing is that you retain the copyright. Ergo, you can license it to a publisher for an updated edition or just distribution.
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 2:25 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:
The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions. It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
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Edward Angel

Re: Book publishing advice needed

Publishers are not good guys.

One counter example: CRC Press returned the copyright to a couple books in which I had chapters because there weren’t many sales and we were able to put our chapters online. The books had only been out a couple of years.

Pearson has violated by contract in a way that had little financial impact but really pissed me off. So what can I do? Suing them is not a realistic option.

_______________________

Ed Angel

Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico

1017 Sierra Pinon

Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home) [hidden email]

505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel

On Jul 4, 2020, at 8:55 PM, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick said " the contract should explicitly say that rights revert to the author when the publisher no longer maintains the book in print and promotes it."

I handwrote that into the contract for the book on New Realism (presumably based on a suggestion from you). Alas, that's an almost nonsensical insertion at this point. The company will maintain a website that lists the book indefinitely, with it available for purchase from various marketplaces such as Amazon and Google books. So it is "maintained" and "promoted", at no cost, in perpetuity, and is always available, because books can now easily be printed on demand in single copy. I expect nowadays it might make more sense to say something like: "If the book sells no copies in X years, in any medium supported by the publisher, then the rights revert to the author."

It has been nine years, and the book still hasn't sold enough copies for me to see a penny.

If I were writing a novel I would definitely either self publish or find a firm that focuses on online publishing, and which returns a definite marketing plan in return for their cut (there are firms that focus on kickstarting novels, or other internet forums, for example).

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor
[hidden email]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 4:46 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:
At the very list, the contract should explicitly say that rights revert to the author when the publisher no longer maintains the book in print and promotes it. I often edited my magazine contracts to give only first rights. I agree with Tom, that copyright should stay with the author.

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 2:32 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Another advantage of self-publishing is that you retain the copyright. Ergo, you can license it to a publisher for an updated edition or just distribution.
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 2:25 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:
The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions. It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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thompnickson2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Eric Charles-2

Eric,

If you had the rights back, what would you do with them?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 8:55 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Nick said " the contract should explicitly say that rights revert to the author when the publisher no longer maintains the book in print and promotes it."

It has been nine years, and the book still hasn't sold enough copies for me to see a penny.

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 4:46 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

At the very list, the contract should explicitly say that rights revert to the author when the publisher no longer maintains the book in print and promotes it. I often edited my magazine contracts to give only first rights. I agree with Tom, that copyright should stay with the author.

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Saturday, July 4, 2020 2:32 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Another advantage of self-publishing is that you retain the copyright. Ergo, you can license it to a publisher for an updated edition or just distribution.
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 2:25 PM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Jochen:
The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher" for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes quite literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions. It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)               505.473.9646(h)
NM Foundation for Open Government
Check out It's The People's Data
============================================

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.

At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book" at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.

For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked, and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak

-J.
- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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Russell Standish-2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Tom Johnson

Being self-published hasn't stopped my book "Theory of Nothing" from
being cited. According to Google Scholar, it has 22 citations, 9th on
my list in terms of citation count, just after "Why Occams Razor", a
peer reviewed paper on similar topics. It got a bit of a boost from
Max Tegmark's book, as he singled it out as inspiration, kind of ironic when it
was one of Max's "crazy papers" that inspired me to write "Why Occams
Razor" and then "Theory of Nothing".

I think you need to have a reason to publish a book. Making money is
not one them - almost nobody makes money from writing books. Vanity
publications ("it looks good on the CV") is another one to avoid. Best
bet is if you have a story or a topic that needs telling, and you
think would be interesting to other people, then go for it. Marketing
then becomes telling other people about it, advancing arguments from
it in fora like this. With a bit of luck, it goes viral.

One good reason for writing academic books is that it gives you
expanded scope to explain your ideas more fully, and in less
technically forbidding terms. Allows you to expand your readership
beyond the narrow circle reading your peer revieed articles. But you
probably want those peer reviewed articles to back up/draw upon your
book work. That's probably the reason why old academics write books,
and young ones write papers.

In my case, I've self-published 3 books so far: "Theory of Nothing",
which has sold over 1000 copies, and perhaps 2-3 times as many free
downloads from my website and the usual pirate websites, but in no way
does the royalties cover the time I put into it (unless being paid
less than a Calcutta rickshaw driver was a career ambition); "Amoeba's
Secret", a translation of a semi-autobiography by Bruno Marchal, which
was about the clearest exposition he gave of his ideas, and "Magic
Cottage", an Anthology of my son's writing, which was quite exquisite,
and sadly something he's not really doing now. Magic Cottage proved to
be more of a vanity publication than I thought it would be - but
partly because he never took up my suggestion of leaving a copy around
his college room, now apartment, where it could act as a conversation
starter. I also envisaged him using the book when going for jobs that
might require writing skills, but it seems he hasn't needed to do that
to date.

Cheers

On Sat, Jul 04, 2020 at 10:25:03PM +0200, Jochen Fromm wrote:

> Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an official
> publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists and researchers
> can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that someone would actually do
> it. Normally self-published texts are not considered as reliable or trustworthy
> sources. I didn't expect that finding a decent publisher would be so
> difficult.
>
> -J.
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Tom Johnson <[hidden email]>
> Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed
>
> Jochen:
> The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.
>
> Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own Publisher"
> for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems with all
> publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. I think YOU should
> want to maintain control of the copyright to your work. It will depend on the
> contract, but many or most publishers will try to lock down the copyright in
> their favor for all -- ALL -- forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout
> the universe. Sometimes quite literally.
>
> Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not
> being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the publisher will do
> little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its catalog and,
> maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. Given that, a 5 percent royalty
> should be seen as a con.
>
> Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format and
> produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. It is especially
> good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF editions. Again the
> advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the prices and to
> a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle all the backend financial
> arrangements and administration and pay directly and quickly. I also use a
> very good, high quality digital printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions.
> It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) quickly,
> along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks there will also, for
> only $25, set up your book in the Amazon inventory search engine. Finally,
> there is Amazon's self-publishing arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice,
> the control over all aspects is in your hands.
>
> Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the marketing/
> publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with any publisher of any
> size you will have to do the same thing.
>
> Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you might want
> to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
> Tom
>
> ============================================
> Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
> NM Foundation for Open Government
> Check out It's The People's Data
> ============================================
>
>
>
> [icon-] Virus-free. www.avast.com
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers
> Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon &
> Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of
> money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and
> MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from
> professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.
>
> At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who
> publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open
> access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book"
> at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other
> people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.
>
> For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in
> Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are
> really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for
> a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked,
> and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
> https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/
> novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak
>
> -J.
> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>

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--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders [hidden email]
http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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