Book publishing advice needed

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 4:47 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

-J.

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

From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Russ Abbott

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

I haven't been following this thread, so this may already have been mentioned. But in case it hasn't: Springer has a free-book publishing promotion.

-- Russ Abbott
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles

On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 9:35 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Russ, Jochen,

Thanks for what you wrote, below. I have never managed a book-length
exposition of my ideas, so I particularly appreciate what you have
accomplished. Perhaps the incentives are coming to be where they should be.
Why should it be that others pay to be infected with my ideas? I don't
share Glen's distaste for books, as opposed to papers. I think I have
learned the most, over the years, from lengthy arguments, such as Williams's
NATURAL SELECTION AND ADAPTATION and Sean Carroll's ENDLESS FORMS MOST
BEAUTIFUL or even (I hate to admit it) Dawkins's THE SELFISH GENE, where the
author has space to organize the papers we all know from a well developed
point of view, or books like THE BEAK OF THE FINCH, or Waldrop's
COMPLEXITY, which present biographies of a research program. I grant that
leaning heavily on such works for one's understanding of the world makes one
vulnerable And I would hate to live in a world in which everybody I talked
to was reading only such works. (I need the Glens of the world.) But
still, I think, such works give a perspective that cannot be obtained in any
other way.

So keep writing them!

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Russell Standish
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 3:48 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

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
> 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
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

--

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

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe
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archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
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un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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Jochen Fromm-5

Re: Book publishing advice needed

Thanks, looks promising. I believe the promotion is misleading, though. It seems to be a kind of lottery because normally Open Access publishing at Springer costs about 15.000 $. Who I is willing to spend so much money? The system is broken.

https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books/books/pricing

-J.

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

From: Russ Abbott <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/5/20 19:03 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

I haven't been following this thread, so this may already have been mentioned. But in case it hasn't: Springer has a free-book publishing promotion.

-- Russ Abbott
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles

On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 9:35 AM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Russ, Jochen,

Thanks for what you wrote, below. I have never managed a book-length
exposition of my ideas, so I particularly appreciate what you have
accomplished. Perhaps the incentives are coming to be where they should be.
Why should it be that others pay to be infected with my ideas? I don't
share Glen's distaste for books, as opposed to papers. I think I have
learned the most, over the years, from lengthy arguments, such as Williams's
NATURAL SELECTION AND ADAPTATION and Sean Carroll's ENDLESS FORMS MOST
BEAUTIFUL or even (I hate to admit it) Dawkins's THE SELFISH GENE, where the
author has space to organize the papers we all know from a well developed
point of view, or books like THE BEAK OF THE FINCH, or Waldrop's
COMPLEXITY, which present biographies of a research program. I grant that
leaning heavily on such works for one's understanding of the world makes one
vulnerable And I would hate to live in a world in which everybody I talked
to was reading only such works. (I need the Glens of the world.) But
still, I think, such works give a perspective that cannot be obtained in any
other way.

So keep writing them!

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Russell Standish
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 3:48 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

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
> 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
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

--

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

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

Prof David West

Re: The theory of everything

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick,

Can't speak to tornadoes, but rocks certainly evolve. To understand how, you need to let go of your Western Rationalism just a tad.

Karma and reincarnation provide a theory that, in turns, provides a context for seeing how a rock can evolve, very slowly to be sure, simply by 'acting correctly' and thereby minimizing its accrual of karma. There is a lot more to it of course, but this gets the basic point across.

Now, before you dismiss this idea, simply by reflex, as utter mysticism; let me point out that the specific theory is grounded in a larger theory of physics that incorporates 'consciousness' as a fundamental property; and then point out that this theory of physics yields models, models that include prediction and verification, and that those models yielded mathematical insights that predated the 'rediscovery / reinvention' of some of the mathematics that underpin Western Rationalist Science.

Reading a book at the moment that makes the argument that Physics, in particular, is no longer 'Science' because theory at the leading edge of investigation is no longer subject to experimental verification and has become at least as "mystical" in essence as those bodies of knowledge so cavalierly dismissed.

This post does not argue that Karma and Reincarnation are "Real" or "Truth."

davew

On Sun, Jul 5, 2020, at 10:46 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

Jochen,

FOOD FIGHT! FOOD FIGHT! I absolutely and totally disagree that “everything evolves” [while agreeing that anything that is everything is nothing]. Rocks and tornadoes do not evolve. They change, but the don’t evolve. Evolution (to me) is a very specific pattern of design arising through phylogenetic descent – lineages being bent through time to match their circumstances. I am not entirely sure that some inanimate things don’t evolve. I would have a hard time arguing ferociously that the sorting of pebbles on a beach is not the result of some sort of evolution. I certainly don’t want to define evolution as something that only organisms can do, if only because that turns the assertion, “only organisms evolve” into a nothing, or an everything, depending on how you care to look at it

In this matter, as in all matters, Eric will correct me.

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 Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 4:47 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Russ, I agree. Maybe we found it already, the theory of everything & nothing: Darwin's theory of evolution. It is a theory of everything because everything evolves. It doesn't say anything how fish, insects, dinosaurs, mammals, birds, religions, civilizations, companies, parties or states look like, though. Therefore it is also a theory of nothing. I have to reread your book.
https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

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
>     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
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

--

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

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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/
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- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
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Marcus G. Daniels

Re: The theory of everything

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

“Evolve” in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 9:47 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Jochen,

In this matter, as in all matters, Eric will correct me.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

-J.

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

From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

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
>     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
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

--

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

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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/

thompnickson2

Re: The theory of everything

In reply to this post by Prof David West

Dave,

Since they don’t evolve in my sense, in what sense to rocks evolve?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 1:08 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Nick,

Can't speak to tornadoes, but rocks certainly evolve. To understand how, you need to let go of your Western Rationalism just a tad.

This post does not argue that Karma and Reincarnation are "Real" or "Truth."

davew

On Sun, Jul 5, 2020, at 10:46 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

Jochen,

FOOD FIGHT! FOOD FIGHT! I absolutely and totally disagree that “everything evolves” [while agreeing that anything that is everything is nothing]. Rocks and tornadoes do not evolve. They change, but the don’t evolve. Evolution (to me) is a very specific pattern of design arising through phylogenetic descent – lineages being bent through time to match their circumstances. I am not entirely sure that some inanimate things don’t evolve. I would have a hard time arguing ferociously that the sorting of pebbles on a beach is not the result of some sort of evolution. I certainly don’t want to define evolution as something that only organisms can do, if only because that turns the assertion, “only organisms evolve” into a nothing, or an everything, depending on how you care to look at it

In this matter, as in all matters, Eric will correct me.

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 Jochen Fromm
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 4:47 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Russ, I agree. Maybe we found it already, the theory of everything & nothing: Darwin's theory of evolution. It is a theory of everything because everything evolves. It doesn't say anything how fish, insects, dinosaurs, mammals, birds, religions, civilizations, companies, parties or states look like, though. Therefore it is also a theory of nothing. I have to reread your book.
https://www.hpcoders.com.au/nothing.html

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>
Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

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
>     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
> archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

--

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

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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: The theory of everything

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Marcus,

So in your sense, a system evolves if it passes along a predictable pathway from state to state. I wonder if phylogenetic evolution is a special case of yours.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 1:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

“Evolve” in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system

Jochen,

In this matter, as in all matters, Eric will correct me.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

-J.

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

From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: The theory of everything

Yes, phylogenetic evolution is often modeled using a matrix exponential.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 1:35 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Marcus,

So in your sense, a system evolves if it passes along a predictable pathway from state to state. I wonder if phylogenetic evolution is a special case of yours.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

“Evolve” in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system

Jochen,

In this matter, as in all matters, Eric will correct me.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

-J.

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

From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

thompnickson2

Re: The theory of everything

So, phylogenetic evolution is evolution that proceeds toward adaptation. How would a state theorist characterize that constraint?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 2:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Yes, phylogenetic evolution is often modeled using a matrix exponential.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 1:35 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Marcus,

So in your sense, a system evolves if it passes along a predictable pathway from state to state. I wonder if phylogenetic evolution is a special case of yours.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

“Evolve” in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system

Jochen,

In this matter, as in all matters, Eric will correct me.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

-J.

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

From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: The theory of everything

A matrix exponential proceeds toward an equilibrium state.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 1:47 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

So, phylogenetic evolution is evolution that proceeds toward adaptation. How would a state theorist characterize that constraint?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

Yes, phylogenetic evolution is often modeled using a matrix exponential.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 1:35 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Marcus,

So in your sense, a system evolves if it passes along a predictable pathway from state to state. I wonder if phylogenetic evolution is a special case of yours.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

“Evolve” in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system

Jochen,

In this matter, as in all matters, Eric will correct me.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

-J.

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

From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Tom Johnson

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick: How and who is going to define "no longer promotes it."?

============================================
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 2:46 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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thompnickson2

Re: The theory of everything

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Sorry. I may not be worth your effort, here. I just don’t understand what you said.

Let it be the case that as we examine the history of species, there are repeated (and therefore predictable) pathways through which they pass. A lineage of any sort, entering the water at some historical stage becomes more streamlined, let’s say. Because streamlining is characteristic of creatures that move through water, we say that any such lineage has adapted to life in water. Thus, in my way of thinking, to evolve [phylogenetically]in this case is to become more like creatures that move through water. I have never been entirely clear what this additional constraint, ADAPTED phyletic descent, constitutes. I have been writing for many years, and I have been challenged on many points, but nobody has challenged me on this one, To put the question baldly, wtf is natural design, anyway, as a descriptive property. Please don’t answer that design is, whatever designers produce, because that is an example of a tethered description, and leaves us with nothing to say about the good that ‘designers” produce in the world.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 2:49 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

A matrix exponential proceeds toward an equilibrium state.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 1:47 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

So, phylogenetic evolution is evolution that proceeds toward adaptation. How would a state theorist characterize that constraint?

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

Yes, phylogenetic evolution is often modeled using a matrix exponential.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Sunday, July 5, 2020 at 1:35 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The theory of everything

Marcus,

So in your sense, a system evolves if it passes along a predictable pathway from state to state. I wonder if phylogenetic evolution is a special case of yours.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

“Evolve” in this sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamical_system

Jochen,

In this matter, as in all matters, Eric will correct me.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

-J.

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

From: Russell Standish <[hidden email]>

Date: 7/5/20 11:49 (GMT+01:00)

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

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

thompnickson2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Tom Johnson

Hi, Tom, I take that to be a rhetorical question.

However, in my experience, no publisher has ever failed to give me back a copyright when I asked for it, so I have never had to put the concept to the test.

If you ask me to express my honest feelings in the matter I would say that I was overwhelmingly lucky to be paid by my university to write, and to the extent that that writing brought me income beyond my salary, I was doubly and unreasonably blessed.

Nick

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Tom Johnson
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 3:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Nick: How and who is going to define "no longer promotes it."?

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

Virus-free. www.avast.com

On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 2:46 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
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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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam
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Tom Johnson

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by Stephen Guerin-5

Steve:

I, too, have not heard of the card you speak of. Does the card contain the book? If so, is it a flash drive type card or what?

Tom

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

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On Sat, 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

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Tom Johnson

Re: Book publishing advice needed

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

Nick: The advantage of being in a journalism dept. was that I got battle ribbons for publishing in the non-academic publications that also paid me for that work. Hell, they even paid expenses. A semi-double-dipping, one would think. Though I did publish in a few academic journals, usually upon invitation, that was never my main focus.

Tom

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

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On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 3:07 PM <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, Tom, I take that to be a rhetorical question.

However, in my experience, no publisher has ever failed to give me back a copyright when I asked for it, so I have never had to put the concept to the test.

If you ask me to express my honest feelings in the matter I would say that I was overwhelmingly lucky to be paid by my university to write, and to the extent that that writing brought me income beyond my salary, I was doubly and unreasonably blessed.

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: Sunday, July 5, 2020 3:01 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Nick: How and who is going to define "no longer promotes it."?
t

============================================
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 2:46 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

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Tom Johnson - [hidden email]
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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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thompnickson2

Re: Book publishing advice needed

We led a charmed life, let’s face it.

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University