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Re: Self publishing

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Russ Abbott

Re: Self publishing

See this NYT article and sign up here.

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________

Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles

Google voice: 747-999-5105

Google+: https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/

vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
_____________________________________________

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, everybody,

I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to “hold the Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the publishing of the work.” I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, “Well, probably not.” And then he thought for a moment and said, “Oh, they’ld never come after you for that!” Early contracts limited my liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually provided authors’ insurance for a modest premium. But no more.

Well today, I got an author’s contract for a paper I am contributed to an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been commissioned by the publisher and was “work for hire”. Now, work for hire means that one’s surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right to claim it as one’s own work. It’s the kind of contract you sign when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of doing business with them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a document that said that my original work was “work for hire.” Couldn’t do it.

It’s too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self publishing. With, say, Amazon” Does anybody on the list have any experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would like to share?

My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around the dinner table about “developing authors” and trying to find new authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new author caught on. They published Churchill’s Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very little, and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to dump them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Nick Thompson

Re: Self publishing

Thanks, Russ.

Why, exactly, do we need them anyway. Can’t any list of a hundred experts (like FRIAM, for instance) become a peer-review journal with everything published to the web? I have wondered about this before. Let’s say we announce the FRIAM journal of Complexity Science and Scatology. Now, anybody can send us a paper 5 dollars and somebody will read it and assign to it a number of stars, lets say between 0 and 5. Now, when the author receives the review, he may publish the paper with the assigned number of stars, or he may revise the paper. Readers of the “journal” can set number of stars as a reading criterion. We could have a second popularity index, for people, not on the editorial board, express approval or disapproval for an article.

Some one of you is doing this already, right? Who? Where? How’s it working.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 10:14 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing

See this NYT article and sign up here.

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________

Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles

Google voice: 747-999-5105

Google+: https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/

vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
_____________________________________________

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, everybody,

I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to “hold the Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the publishing of the work.” I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, “Well, probably not.” And then he thought for a moment and said, “Oh, they’ld never come after you for that!” Early contracts limited my liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually provided authors’ insurance for a modest premium. But no more.

Well today, I got an author’s contract for a paper I am contributed to an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been commissioned by the publisher and was “work for hire”. Now, work for hire means that one’s surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right to claim it as one’s own work. It’s the kind of contract you sign when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of doing business with them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a document that said that my original work was “work for hire.” Couldn’t do it.

It’s too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self publishing. With, say, Amazon” Does anybody on the list have any experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would like to share?

My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around the dinner table about “developing authors” and trying to find new authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new author caught on. They published Churchill’s Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very little, and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to dump them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org

Russ Abbott

Re: Self publishing

Yann LeCun has a promising idea. It's similar to yours, just more fleshed out.

-- Russ

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 9:43 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks, Russ.

Why, exactly, do we need them anyway. Can’t any list of a hundred experts (like FRIAM, for instance) become a peer-review journal with everything published to the web? I have wondered about this before. Let’s say we announce the FRIAM journal of Complexity Science and Scatology. Now, anybody can send us a paper 5 dollars and somebody will read it and assign to it a number of stars, lets say between 0 and 5. Now, when the author receives the review, he may publish the paper with the assigned number of stars, or he may revise the paper. Readers of the “journal” can set number of stars as a reading criterion. We could have a second popularity index, for people, not on the editorial board, express approval or disapproval for an article.

Some one of you is doing this already, right? Who? Where? How’s it working.

Nick

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 10:14 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing

See this NYT article and sign up here.

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

Google voice: <a href="tel:747-999-5105" target="_blank" value="+17479995105">747-999-5105
Google+: https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/

vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
_____________________________________________

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi, everybody,

I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to “hold the Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the publishing of the work.” I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, “Well, probably not.” And then he thought for a moment and said, “Oh, they’ld never come after you for that!” Early contracts limited my liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually provided authors’ insurance for a modest premium. But no more.

Well today, I got an author’s contract for a paper I am contributed to an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been commissioned by the publisher and was “work for hire”. Now, work for hire means that one’s surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right to claim it as one’s own work. It’s the kind of contract you sign when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of doing business with them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a document that said that my original work was “work for hire.” Couldn’t do it.

It’s too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self publishing. With, say, Amazon” Does anybody on the list have any experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would like to share?

My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around the dinner table about “developing authors” and trying to find new authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new author caught on. They published Churchill’s Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very little, and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to dump them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Greg Sonnenfeld

Re: Self publishing

I'm wondering if anyone has created an academic authors union to put
pressure on the publishers? If authors were to publish under a union,
and allow the union to set publisher restrictions, it would give them
a great deal of negotiation ability. Self publishing would be one
option, but securing better contracts through current publishers would
also be an option.

****************************
Greg Sonnenfeld

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be
sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 12:32 AM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Yann LeCun has a promising idea. It's similar to yours, just more fleshed
> out.
>
> -- Russ
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 9:43 PM, Nicholas Thompson
> <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks, Russ.
>>
>>
>>
>> Why, exactly, do we need them anyway. Can’t any list of a hundred experts
>> (like FRIAM, for instance) become a peer-review journal with everything
>> published to the web? I have wondered about this before. Let’s say we
>> announce the FRIAM journal of Complexity Science and Scatology. Now,
>> anybody can send us a paper 5 dollars and somebody will read it and assign
>> to it a number of stars, lets say between 0 and 5. Now, when the author
>> receives the review, he may publish the paper with the assigned number of
>> stars, or he may revise the paper. Readers of the “journal” can set number
>> of stars as a reading criterion. We could have a second popularity index,
>> for people, not on the editorial board, express approval or disapproval for
>> an article.
>>
>>
>>
>> Some one of you is doing this already, right? Who? Where? How’s it
>> working.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
>> Behalf Of Russ Abbott
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 10:14 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing
>>
>>
>>
>> See this NYT article and sign up here.
>>
>>
>>
>> -- Russ Abbott
>> _____________________________________________
>>
>> Professor, Computer Science
>> California State University, Los Angeles
>>
>> Google voice: 747-999-5105
>>
>> Google+: https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
>>
>> vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
>> _____________________________________________
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson
>> <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, everybody,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time and
>> each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one before. My
>> favorite was the publisher who asked me to “hold the Publisher harmless for
>> anything that might occur as a consequence of the publishing of the work.”
>> I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand caught
>> in the press while my book was running and he answered, “Well, probably
>> not.” And then he thought for a moment and said, “Oh, they’ld never come
>> after you for that!” Early contracts limited my liability to the income from
>> royalties, and one publisher actually provided authors’ insurance for a
>> modest premium. But no more.
>>
>>
>>
>> Well today, I got an author’s contract for a paper I am contributed to an
>> academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been
>> commissioned by the publisher and was “work for hire”. Now, work for hire
>> means that one’s surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right to
>> claim it as one’s own work. It’s the kind of contract you sign when you
>> write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this case was Oxford
>> University Press, in case any of you are thinking of doing business with
>> them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a document
>> that said that my original work was “work for hire.” Couldn’t do it.
>>
>>
>>
>> It’s too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to my
>> [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for her
>> career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self publishing. With,
>> say, Amazon” Does anybody on the list have any experience with Amazon or
>> other self publishing services that they would like to share?
>>
>>
>>
>> My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around the
>> dinner table about “developing authors” and trying to find new authors, and
>> how a few books might have to be published before a new author caught on.
>> They published Churchill’s Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson
>> Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very little,
>> and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off the
>> fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to dump
>> them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>
>> http://www.cusf.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
>> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Robert J. Cordingley

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Russ Abbott

We've just finished a website to sell an eBook (Kindle or EPUB) for an author in town, Josh Gonze, see the streetsofsantafe.com. Visitors buy the ebook ($11.95) via PayPal and automatically receive an email with a digital download link that's good for 2 days. This digital self publishing approach avoids giving Amazon a chunk of the sales price.

Hope this helps.
Thanks
Robert Cordingley
www.cirrillian.com

On 2/14/12 9:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

Hi, everybody,

I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to “hold the Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the publishing of the work.” I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, “Well, probably not.” And then he thought for a moment and said, “Oh, they’ld never come after you for that!” Early contracts limited my liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually provided authors’ insurance for a modest premium. But no more.

Well today, I got an author’s contract for a paper I am contributed to an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been commissioned by the publisher and was “work for hire”. Now, work for hire means that one’s surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right to claim it as one’s own work. It’s the kind of contract you sign when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of doing business with them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a document that said that my original work was “work for hire.” Couldn’t do it.

It’s too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self publishing. With, say, Amazon” Does anybody on the list have any experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would like to share?

My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around the dinner table about “developing authors” and trying to find new authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new author caught on. They published Churchill’s Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very little, and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to dump them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

http://www.cusf.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Victoria Hughes

Re: Self publishing

Any watermark or copy protection on this format?

Thanks,

Tory

On Feb 15, 2012, at 8:16 AM, Robert J. Cordingley wrote:

We've just finished a website to sell an eBook (Kindle or EPUB) for an author in town, Josh Gonze, see the streetsofsantafe.com. Visitors buy the ebook ($11.95) via PayPal and automatically receive an email with a digital download link that's good for 2 days. This digital self publishing approach avoids giving Amazon a chunk of the sales price.

Hope this helps.
Thanks
Robert Cordingley
www.cirrillian.com

On 2/14/12 9:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Hi, everybody,

I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to “hold the Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the publishing of the work.” I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, “Well, probably not.” And then he thought for a moment and said, “Oh, they’ld never come after you for that!” Early contracts limited my liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually provided authors’ insurance for a modest premium. But no more.

Well today, I got an author’s contract for a paper I am contributed to an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been commissioned by the publisher and was “work for hire”. Now, work for hire means that one’s surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right to claim it as one’s own work. It’s the kind of contract you sign when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of doing business with them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a document that said that my original work was “work for hire.” Couldn’t do it.

It’s too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self publishing. With, say, Amazon” Does anybody on the list have any experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would like to share?

My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around the dinner table about “developing authors” and trying to find new authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new author caught on. They published Churchill’s Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very little, and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to dump them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Sarbajit Roy (testing)

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

I have interests in a niche family publishing business in history /
social sciences in India..
But we mainly publish European authors (the Romance langages) in
excellent quality in small runs (ie. low thousands) which nobody else
handles..

Authors:
http://www.transbooks.com/auth.html

We publish print journals / books at 30% (possiby less) of what it
would cost in the USA.without compromising quality.

On 2/15/12, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

> Thanks, Russ.
> Why, exactly, do we need them anyway. Can't any list of a hundred experts
> (like FRIAM, for instance) become a peer-review journal with everything
> published to the web? I have wondered about this before. Let's say we
> announce the FRIAM journal of Complexity Science and Scatology. Now,
> anybody can send us a paper 5 dollars and somebody will read it and assign
> to it a number of stars, lets say between 0 and 5. Now, when the author
> receives the review, he may publish the paper with the assigned number of
> stars, or he may revise the paper. Readers of the "journal" can set number
> of stars as a reading criterion. We could have a second popularity index,
> for people, not on the editorial board, express approval or disapproval for
> an article.
>
> Some one of you is doing this already, right? Who? Where? How's it
> working.
>
> Nick
>
>
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
> Of Russ Abbott
> Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 10:14 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing
>
> See this NYT article
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/researchers-boycott-elsevier-jour
> nal-publisher.html> and sign up here <http://thecostofknowledge.com/> .
>
>
> -- Russ Abbott
> _____________________________________________
>
> Professor, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
>
> Google voice: 747-999-5105
>
> Google+: https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
>
> vita: <http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/>
> http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
> _____________________________________________
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson
> <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi, everybody,
>
>
>
> I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time and
> each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one before. My
> favorite was the publisher who asked me to "hold the Publisher harmless for
> anything that might occur as a consequence of the publishing of the work."
> I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand caught
> in the press while my book was running and he answered, "Well, probably
> not." And then he thought for a moment and said, "Oh, they'ld never come
> after you for that!" Early contracts limited my liability to the income from
> royalties, and one publisher actually provided authors' insurance for a
> modest premium. But no more.
>
>
>
> Well today, I got an author's contract for a paper I am contributed to an
> academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been
> commissioned by the publisher and was "work for hire". Now, work for hire
> means that one's surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right to
> claim it as one's own work. It's the kind of contract you sign when you
> write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this case was Oxford
> University Press, in case any of you are thinking of doing business with
> them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a document
> that said that my original work was "work for hire." Couldn't do it.
>
>
>
> It's too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to my
> [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for her
> career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self publishing. With,
> say, Amazon" Does anybody on the list have any experience with Amazon or
> other self publishing services that they would like to share?
>
>
>
> My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around the
> dinner table about "developing authors" and trying to find new authors, and
> how a few books might have to be published before a new author caught on.
> They published Churchill's Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson
> Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very little,
> and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off the
> fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to dump
> them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> http://www.cusf.org <http://www.cusf.org/>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
>

Owen Densmore

Re: Self publishing

Administrator

In reply to this post by Greg Sonnenfeld

+1!

While in Silicon Valley, I asked about a Union for tech folks because we have a high turnover rate .. we find interesting jobs or start startups. My argument wasn't pay scale, striking, or that sort of thing .. but just a professional organization that would help centralize benefits and so on. A middleman. Didn't happen.

But this has traction, I think .. Occupy the Academy!

-- Owen

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 1:29 AM, Greg Sonnenfeld <[hidden email]> wrote:

I'm wondering if anyone has created an academic authors union to put
pressure on the publishers? If authors were to publish under a union,
and allow the union to set publisher restrictions, it would give them
a great deal of negotiation ability. Self publishing would be one
option, but securing better contracts through current publishers would
also be an option.

****************************
Greg Sonnenfeld

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be
sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”

Nick Thompson

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Sarbajit Roy (testing)

Interesting, Sarbajit. Thanks. N

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Sarbajit Roy
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:20 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing

I have interests in a niche family publishing business in history / social
sciences in India..
But we mainly publish European authors (the Romance langages) in excellent
quality in small runs (ie. low thousands) which nobody else handles..

Authors:
http://www.transbooks.com/auth.html

We publish print journals / books at 30% (possiby less) of what it would
cost in the USA.without compromising quality.

On 2/15/12, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Thanks, Russ.
> Why, exactly, do we need them anyway. Can't any list of a hundred
> experts (like FRIAM, for instance) become a peer-review journal with
> everything published to the web? I have wondered about this before.
> Let's say we announce the FRIAM journal of Complexity Science and
> Scatology. Now, anybody can send us a paper 5 dollars and somebody
> will read it and assign to it a number of stars, lets say between 0
> and 5. Now, when the author receives the review, he may publish the
> paper with the assigned number of stars, or he may revise the paper.
Readers of the "journal" can set number
> of stars as a reading criterion. We could have a second popularity
index,

> for people, not on the editorial board, express approval or
> disapproval for an article.
>
> Some one of you is doing this already, right? Who? Where? How's it
> working.
>
> Nick
>
>
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of Russ Abbott
> Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 10:14 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing
>
> See this NYT article
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/researchers-boycott-elsevie
> r-jour nal-publisher.html> and sign up here
> <http://thecostofknowledge.com/> .
>
>
> -- Russ Abbott
> _____________________________________________
>
> Professor, Computer Science
> California State University, Los Angeles
>
> Google voice: 747-999-5105
>
> Google+: https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
>
> vita: <http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/>
> http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
> _____________________________________________
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson
> <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> Hi, everybody,
>
>
>
> I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time
> and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one
> before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to "hold the
> Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the

publishing of the work."

> I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand
> caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, "Well,
> probably not." And then he thought for a moment and said, "Oh,
> they'ld never come after you for that!" Early contracts limited my
> liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually
> provided authors' insurance for a modest premium. But no more.
>
>
>
> Well today, I got an author's contract for a paper I am contributed to
> an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been
> commissioned by the publisher and was "work for hire". Now, work for

hire
> means that one's surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right
> to claim it as one's own work. It's the kind of contract you sign
> when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this
> case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of
> doing business with
> them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a
> document that said that my original work was "work for hire." Couldn't do
it.
>
>
>
> It's too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to
> my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for
> her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self
> publishing. With, say, Amazon" Does anybody on the list have any
> experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would
like to share?
>
>
>
> My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around
> the dinner table about "developing authors" and trying to find new
> authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new
author caught on.
> They published Churchill's Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson
> Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very
little,
> and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off
> the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to
dump

> them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> http://www.cusf.org <http://www.cusf.org/>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
> at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
> http://www.friam.org
>
>
>
>

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

James Steiner

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Victoria Hughes

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 10:23 AM, Victoria Hughes
<[hidden email]> wrote:
> Any watermark or copy protection on this format?

Tory,

Don't sweat it. DRM never works anyway.

If anyone has (legal) access to the content, and there is a demand for
it, it will end up stripped of whatever DRM or watermark you care to
impose, and will be posted to piratebay or some other place. The
harder you try to prevent copying or use outside of whatever walled
garden you might create, the more you inconvenience your paying
customers, and, well, only the first illegal users (the one that gets
your content legally then removes the DRM and shares it) will even
notice.

Cory Doctorow has written and said a lot on this topic: This is a
transcript of a talk he gave at Microsoft:

http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

Video of this talk (requires Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player):

http://researchchannel.org/prog/displayevent.asp?rid=3302

Note that Doctorow is a pioneer and advocate of DRM-free publishing,
as well as refusing to accept publishers "standard" copyright terms
for authors, and is still a best-selling author.

~~James

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Greg Sonnenfeld

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

I had also surveyed about organizing when I was in Silicon Valley,
most of the techies didn't really understand how much influence they
could have if they organized. I also think academia may be more
receptive to a publishing union to keep their work open as intended.
The most important process in the academic publishing is recognized
and legitimate peer review, which must be maintained what ever the
publishing method.

It would be interesting to make a site dedicated to discussing a
forming a academic publishing union and seeing how many professionals
would sign up. No policy, just a mission statement, real identities,
and the means to let policy and consensus among academics form.

****************************
Greg Sonnenfeld

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be
sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 10:57 AM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Interesting, Sarbajit. Thanks. N
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
> Of Sarbajit Roy
> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:20 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing
>
> I have interests in a niche family publishing business in history / social
> sciences in India..
> But we mainly publish European authors (the Romance langages) in excellent
> quality in small runs (ie. low thousands) which nobody else handles..
>
> Authors:
> http://www.transbooks.com/auth.html
>
> We publish print journals / books at 30% (possiby less) of what it would
> cost in the USA.without compromising quality.
>
> On 2/15/12, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Thanks, Russ.
>> Why, exactly, do we need them anyway. Can't any list of a hundred
>> experts (like FRIAM, for instance) become a peer-review journal with
>> everything published to the web? I have wondered about this before.
>> Let's say we announce the FRIAM journal of Complexity Science and
>> Scatology. Now, anybody can send us a paper 5 dollars and somebody
>> will read it and assign to it a number of stars, lets say between 0
>> and 5. Now, when the author receives the review, he may publish the
>> paper with the assigned number of stars, or he may revise the paper.
> Readers of the "journal" can set number
>> of stars as a reading criterion. We could have a second popularity
> index,
>> for people, not on the editorial board, express approval or
>> disapproval for an article.
>>
>> Some one of you is doing this already, right? Who? Where? How's it
>> working.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
>> Behalf Of Russ Abbott
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 10:14 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing
>>
>> See this NYT article
>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/researchers-boycott-elsevie
>> r-jour nal-publisher.html> and sign up here
>> <http://thecostofknowledge.com/> .
>>
>>
>> -- Russ Abbott
>> _____________________________________________
>>
>> Professor, Computer Science
>> California State University, Los Angeles
>>
>> Google voice: 747-999-5105
>>
>> Google+: https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
>>
>> vita: <http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/>
>> http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
>> _____________________________________________
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson
>> <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, everybody,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time
>> and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one
>> before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to "hold the
>> Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the
> publishing of the work."
>> I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand
>> caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, "Well,
>> probably not." And then he thought for a moment and said, "Oh,
>> they'ld never come after you for that!" Early contracts limited my
>> liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually
>> provided authors' insurance for a modest premium. But no more.
>>
>>
>>
>> Well today, I got an author's contract for a paper I am contributed to
>> an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been
>> commissioned by the publisher and was "work for hire". Now, work for
> hire
>> means that one's surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right
>> to claim it as one's own work. It's the kind of contract you sign
>> when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this
>> case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of
>> doing business with
>> them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a
>> document that said that my original work was "work for hire." Couldn't do
> it.
>>
>>
>>
>> It's too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to
>> my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for
>> her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self
>> publishing. With, say, Amazon" Does anybody on the list have any
>> experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would
> like to share?
>>
>>
>>
>> My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around
>> the dinner table about "developing authors" and trying to find new
>> authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new
> author caught on.
>> They published Churchill's Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson
>> Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very
> little,
>> and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off
>> the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to
> dump
>> them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>
>> http://www.cusf.org <http://www.cusf.org/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
>> at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
>> http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
> unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

James Steiner

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by James Steiner

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Greg Sonnenfeld <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I've found one of the simplest ways to prevent opportunistic piracy of
> books is to stick the buyers name on every page of the PDF ( licensed
> to: John Smith ) :P It discourage people from "lending" the pdf out
> without being heavy handed.
>
> If someone has tools to edit the name out of the PDF, they already
> have tools to get past your DRM.

LOL. Yes, tools, like a printer, scissors, a copy machine, and a
grudge (or an additction).

I can't find a source, but have heard, anecdotally, that the first UK
edition of Harry Potter, released in UK in June 1997 and not scheduled
for US release until Sept 1998, was *manually retyped* by fans, so
that US readers who heard about it could get it. I'm sure this has
happened before then, too.

I wonder if the retypers corrected any typesetting or other editorial
errors they found, or if they left it as-was?

~~James

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Victoria Hughes

Re: Self publishing

Thanks all, this is quite helpful. I particularly like envisaging my readers secretly copying my book so others can read it and ultimately generate financial success à la Rowling. Nice visuals. I'll share, when it happens.

Tory

On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:17 PM, James Steiner wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Greg Sonnenfeld <[hidden email]> wrote:
I've found one of the simplest ways to prevent opportunistic piracy of
books is to stick the buyers name on every page of the PDF ( licensed
to: John Smith ) :P It discourage people from "lending" the pdf out
without being heavy handed.

If someone has tools to edit the name out of the PDF, they already
have tools to get past your DRM.

LOL. Yes, tools, like a printer, scissors, a copy machine, and a
grudge (or an additction).

I can't find a source, but have heard, anecdotally, that the first UK
edition of Harry Potter, released in UK in June 1997 and not scheduled
for US release until Sept 1998, was *manually retyped* by fans, so
that US readers who heard about it could get it. I'm sure this has
happened before then, too.

I wonder if the retypers corrected any typesetting or other editorial
errors they found, or if they left it as-was?

~~James

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Victoria Hughes

Re: Self publishing

re my last note-

> Financial success for me.

Success for my readers in whatever category they choose.

( For those of you who want to query my vague pronoun references...)

On Feb 15, 2012, at 1:04 PM, Victoria Hughes wrote:

Thanks all, this is quite helpful. I particularly like envisaging my readers secretly copying my book so others can read it and ultimately generate financial success à la Rowling. Nice visuals. I'll share, when it happens.
Tory

On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:17 PM, James Steiner wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 1:42 PM, Greg Sonnenfeld <[hidden email]> wrote:
I've found one of the simplest ways to prevent opportunistic piracy of
books is to stick the buyers name on every page of the PDF ( licensed
to: John Smith ) :P It discourage people from "lending" the pdf out
without being heavy handed.

If someone has tools to edit the name out of the PDF, they already
have tools to get past your DRM.

LOL. Yes, tools, like a printer, scissors, a copy machine, and a
grudge (or an additction).

I can't find a source, but have heard, anecdotally, that the first UK
edition of Harry Potter, released in UK in June 1997 and not scheduled
for US release until Sept 1998, was *manually retyped* by fans, so
that US readers who heard about it could get it. I'm sure this has
happened before then, too.

I wonder if the retypers corrected any typesetting or other editorial
errors they found, or if they left it as-was?

~~James

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Russell Standish

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Russ Abbott

I self-published Theory of Nothing after the first 10 publishers
turned it down for "economic reasons" through BookSurge, which was
later bought by Amazon.

It has sold somewhere in the region 550 copies to date.

I made my costs back within a year - but the ebook version hardly sold
at all, even though I insisted on it being DRM-free. So I then
released it as a free DRM-free downloadle PDF, and it was downloaded
more than 2000 times before being torrented 18 months later. The
availablility of the free download had almost no impact on the sales
of the hardcopy version - one could argue that it even sustained the
rate of sales, when otherwise it might have trailed off.

If you think how many people actually read your academic articles,
this is a roaring success story. The one thing it is not, is a viable
source of income. I can't give up my day job :(.

Late last year, I produced a second edition, correcting a number of
errors, most trivial typos. At the same time, I produced a Kindle
version, which is sold through Kindle direct. Surprisingly, this has
not done so well - surprising because the Kindle is a dreadful
displayer of PDF documents (particularly with mathematical formulae),
so the small sticker price should be worth it for Kindle users over
and above the free PDF document.

----

My second data point is an electronic journal "Complexity International"
which was started by a friend of mine in 1993. It is a peer reviewed
journal in the traditional sense but is purely web based and openly
available without subscription fees.

It has run with fits and starts until now - at present, I gather,
they're not accepting submissions, but aim to at least keep the
content available. Part of that is due to funding being in fits and
starts. Another problem was that it never got indexed by ISI.

In 2005 I offered to run the editing of the journal on the
basis of 0.5-1 day per week workload, for which I would receive a
small fee from a government funded networking program for complexity
science. My friend said that I was drastically underestimating the
time commitment for editing a journal, but I was basing my estimates
on what Mark Bedau said he and secretary spend on editing Artificial
Life. Anyway, the upshot was that nothing happened at the time,
although he did manage to find someone to process the back log of
submission and conference papers they had at the time. And now, I
guess funding has run out, and the journal is on ice :(.

Cheers

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 09:39:20PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> Hi, everybody,
>
>
>
> I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time and
> each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one before. My
> favorite was the publisher who asked me to "hold the Publisher harmless for
> anything that might occur as a consequence of the publishing of the work."
> I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand caught
> in the press while my book was running and he answered, "Well, probably
> not." And then he thought for a moment and said, "Oh, they'ld never come
> after you for that!" Early contracts limited my liability to the income from
> royalties, and one publisher actually provided authors' insurance for a
> modest premium. But no more.
>
>
>
> Well today, I got an author's contract for a paper I am contributed to an
> academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been
> commissioned by the publisher and was "work for hire". Now, work for hire
> means that one's surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right to
> claim it as one's own work. It's the kind of contract you sign when you
> write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this case was Oxford
> University Press, in case any of you are thinking of doing business with
> them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a document
> that said that my original work was "work for hire." Couldn't do it.
>
>
>
> It's too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to my
> [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for her
> career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self publishing. With,
> say, Amazon" Does anybody on the list have any experience with Amazon or
> other self publishing services that they would like to share?
>
>
>
> My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around the
> dinner table about "developing authors" and trying to find new authors, and
> how a few books might have to be published before a new author caught on.
> They published Churchill's Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson
> Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very little,
> and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off the
> fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to dump
> them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
> http://www.cusf.org <http://www.cusf.org/>
>
>
>
>
>

> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [hidden email]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Gary Schiltz-4

Re: Self publishing

Here is the core dump of the recently defunct "Code Quarterly" magazine (FRIAM connection: this was started by Peter Seibel, who is Fred Seibel's son). Of course, the target audience and contributers are geeks rather than scientists, so I'm not sure if there is much to learn for science journals...

;; Gary

On Feb 15, 2012, at 5:13 PM, Russell Standish wrote:

> [...]
> My second data point is an electronic journal "Complexity International"
> which was started by a friend of mine in 1993.

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Nick Thompson

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Russell Standish

Russell3,

Other than your time, what are the journal costs? I mean roughly. What are
the categories of cost?

I am having a hard time imagining any.

Nick

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Russell Standish
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 3:14 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing

I self-published Theory of Nothing after the first 10 publishers turned it
down for "economic reasons" through BookSurge, which was later bought by
Amazon.

It has sold somewhere in the region 550 copies to date.

I made my costs back within a year - but the ebook version hardly sold at
all, even though I insisted on it being DRM-free. So I then released it as a
free DRM-free downloadle PDF, and it was downloaded more than 2000 times
before being torrented 18 months later. The availablility of the free
download had almost no impact on the sales of the hardcopy version - one
could argue that it even sustained the rate of sales, when otherwise it
might have trailed off.

If you think how many people actually read your academic articles, this is a
roaring success story. The one thing it is not, is a viable source of
income. I can't give up my day job :(.

Late last year, I produced a second edition, correcting a number of errors,
most trivial typos. At the same time, I produced a Kindle version, which is
sold through Kindle direct. Surprisingly, this has not done so well -
surprising because the Kindle is a dreadful displayer of PDF documents
(particularly with mathematical formulae), so the small sticker price should
be worth it for Kindle users over and above the free PDF document.

----

My second data point is an electronic journal "Complexity International"
which was started by a friend of mine in 1993. It is a peer reviewed journal
in the traditional sense but is purely web based and openly available
without subscription fees.

It has run with fits and starts until now - at present, I gather, they're
not accepting submissions, but aim to at least keep the content available.
Part of that is due to funding being in fits and starts. Another problem was
that it never got indexed by ISI.

In 2005 I offered to run the editing of the journal on the basis of 0.5-1
day per week workload, for which I would receive a small fee from a
government funded networking program for complexity science. My friend said
that I was drastically underestimating the time commitment for editing a
journal, but I was basing my estimates on what Mark Bedau said he and
secretary spend on editing Artificial Life. Anyway, the upshot was that
nothing happened at the time, although he did manage to find someone to
process the back log of submission and conference papers they had at the
time. And now, I guess funding has run out, and the journal is on ice :(.

Cheers

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 09:39:20PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> Hi, everybody,
>
>
>
> I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time
> and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one
> before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to "hold the
> Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the
publishing of the work."
> I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand
> caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, "Well,
> probably not." And then he thought for a moment and said, "Oh,
> they'ld never come after you for that!" Early contracts limited my
> liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually
provided authors' insurance for a
> modest premium. But no more.
>
>
>
> Well today, I got an author's contract for a paper I am contributed to
> an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been
> commissioned by the publisher and was "work for hire". Now, work for
hire
> means that one's surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right
> to claim it as one's own work. It's the kind of contract you sign
> when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this
> case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of
> doing business with
> them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a
> document that said that my original work was "work for hire." Couldn't do
it.
>
>
>
> It's too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to
> my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for
> her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self
> publishing. With, say, Amazon" Does anybody on the list have any
> experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would
like to share?
>
>
>
> My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around
> the dinner table about "developing authors" and trying to find new
> authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new
author caught on.
> They published Churchill's Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson
> Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very
little,
> and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off
> the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to
dump

> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
> at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
> http://www.friam.org

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [hidden email]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Nick Thompson

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Greg Sonnenfeld

Daer Gerg,

An excellent idea!

Where is the guy who started Brain and Behavioral Sciences? If memory
serves, he was in full war with the aptly named Syndics of Cambridge
University on just this issue. I wonder where he ended and if he might be
an ally. In fact, I am surprised he hasn't done it already, although he
may have had to sign a no=competition thingy to get out of bbs.

Seelincry,

Nhailocs

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Greg Sonnenfeld
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 11:37 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing

I had also surveyed about organizing when I was in Silicon Valley, most of
the techies didn't really understand how much influence they could have if
they organized. I also think academia may be more receptive to a publishing
union to keep their work open as intended.
The most important process in the academic publishing is recognized and
legitimate peer review, which must be maintained what ever the publishing
method.

It would be interesting to make a site dedicated to discussing a forming a
academic publishing union and seeing how many professionals would sign up.
No policy, just a mission statement, real identities, and the means to let
policy and consensus among academics form.

****************************
Greg Sonnenfeld

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane
to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 10:57 AM, Nicholas Thompson
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Interesting, Sarbajit. Thanks. N
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf Of Sarbajit Roy
> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 9:20 AM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing
>
> I have interests in a niche family publishing business in history /
> social sciences in India..
> But we mainly publish European authors (the Romance langages) in
> excellent quality in small runs (ie. low thousands) which nobody else

handles..

>
> Authors:
> http://www.transbooks.com/auth.html
>
> We publish print journals / books at 30% (possiby less) of what it
> would cost in the USA.without compromising quality.
>
> On 2/15/12, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> Thanks, Russ.
>> Why, exactly, do we need them anyway. Can't any list of a hundred
>> experts (like FRIAM, for instance) become a peer-review journal with
>> everything published to the web? I have wondered about this before.
>> Let's say we announce the FRIAM journal of Complexity Science and
>> Scatology. Now, anybody can send us a paper 5 dollars and somebody
>> will read it and assign to it a number of stars, lets say between 0
>> and 5. Now, when the author receives the review, he may publish the
>> paper with the assigned number of stars, or he may revise the paper.
> Readers of the "journal" can set number
>> of stars as a reading criterion. We could have a second popularity
> index,
>> for people, not on the editorial board, express approval or
>> disapproval for an article.
>>
>> Some one of you is doing this already, right? Who? Where? How's it
>> working.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
>> Behalf Of Russ Abbott
>> Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2012 10:14 PM
>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing
>>
>> See this NYT article
>> <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/science/researchers-boycott-elsevi
>> e r-jour nal-publisher.html> and sign up here
>> <http://thecostofknowledge.com/> .
>>
>>
>> -- Russ Abbott
>> _____________________________________________
>>
>> Professor, Computer Science
>> California State University, Los Angeles
>>
>> Google voice: 747-999-5105
>>
>> Google+: https://plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/
>>
>> vita: <http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/>
>> http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/
>> _____________________________________________
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 8:39 PM, Nicholas Thompson
>> <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, everybody,
>>
>>
>>
>> I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time
>> and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one
>> before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to "hold the
>> Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of
>> the
> publishing of the work."
>> I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand
>> caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, "Well,
>> probably not." And then he thought for a moment and said, "Oh,
>> they'ld never come after you for that!" Early contracts limited my
>> liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually
>> provided authors' insurance for a modest premium. But no more.
>>
>>
>>
>> Well today, I got an author's contract for a paper I am contributed
>> to an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had
>> been commissioned by the publisher and was "work for hire". Now,
>> work for
> hire
>> means that one's surrenders ALL rights to the work including the
>> right to claim it as one's own work. It's the kind of contract you
>> sign when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in
>> this case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are
>> thinking of doing business with
>> them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a
>> document that said that my original work was "work for hire."
>> Couldn't do
> it.
>>
>>
>>
>> It's too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to
>> my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for
>> her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self
>> publishing. With, say, Amazon" Does anybody on the list have any
>> experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they
>> would
> like to share?
>>
>>
>>
>> My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around
>> the dinner table about "developing authors" and trying to find new
>> authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new
> author caught on.
>> They published Churchill's Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the
>> Peterson Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers
>> do very
> little,
>> and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off
>> the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time
>> to
> dump
>> them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>>
>> Nicholas S. Thompson
>>
>> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>>
>> Clark University
>>
>> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>>
>> http://www.cusf.org <http://www.cusf.org/>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ============================================================
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at
>> cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
>> http://www.friam.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
> at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
> http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
> at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
> http://www.friam.org

Russell Standish

Re: Self publishing

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Looks like I've been demoted to Russell3 :(

Pretty much right. The other costs are almost negligible - running a
webserver, email/office equipment etc.

I estimated that it should only cost around $20,000 per annum to run a
journal... We had the funding at that level.

Cheers

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 06:00:58PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

> Russell3,
>
> Other than your time, what are the journal costs? I mean roughly. What are
> the categories of cost?
>
> I am having a hard time imagining any.
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
> Of Russell Standish
> Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2012 3:14 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Self publishing
>
> I self-published Theory of Nothing after the first 10 publishers turned it
> down for "economic reasons" through BookSurge, which was later bought by
> Amazon.
>
> It has sold somewhere in the region 550 copies to date.
>
> I made my costs back within a year - but the ebook version hardly sold at
> all, even though I insisted on it being DRM-free. So I then released it as a
> free DRM-free downloadle PDF, and it was downloaded more than 2000 times
> before being torrented 18 months later. The availablility of the free
> download had almost no impact on the sales of the hardcopy version - one
> could argue that it even sustained the rate of sales, when otherwise it
> might have trailed off.
>
> If you think how many people actually read your academic articles, this is a
> roaring success story. The one thing it is not, is a viable source of
> income. I can't give up my day job :(.
>
> Late last year, I produced a second edition, correcting a number of errors,
> most trivial typos. At the same time, I produced a Kindle version, which is
> sold through Kindle direct. Surprisingly, this has not done so well -
> surprising because the Kindle is a dreadful displayer of PDF documents
> (particularly with mathematical formulae), so the small sticker price should
> be worth it for Kindle users over and above the free PDF document.
>
> ----
>
> My second data point is an electronic journal "Complexity International"
> which was started by a friend of mine in 1993. It is a peer reviewed journal
> in the traditional sense but is purely web based and openly available
> without subscription fees.
>
> It has run with fits and starts until now - at present, I gather, they're
> not accepting submissions, but aim to at least keep the content available.
> Part of that is due to funding being in fits and starts. Another problem was
> that it never got indexed by ISI.
>
> In 2005 I offered to run the editing of the journal on the basis of 0.5-1
> day per week workload, for which I would receive a small fee from a
> government funded networking program for complexity science. My friend said
> that I was drastically underestimating the time commitment for editing a
> journal, but I was basing my estimates on what Mark Bedau said he and
> secretary spend on editing Artificial Life. Anyway, the upshot was that
> nothing happened at the time, although he did manage to find someone to
> process the back log of submission and conference papers they had at the
> time. And now, I guess funding has run out, and the journal is on ice :(.
>
> Cheers
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 09:39:20PM -0700, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > Hi, everybody,
> >
> >
> >
> > I have signed perhaps a dozen Publishers Agreements over my life time
> > and each one was more onerous, self-serving, and stupid than the one
> > before. My favorite was the publisher who asked me to "hold the
> > Publisher harmless for anything that might occur as a consequence of the
> publishing of the work."
> > I asked a lawyer if this meant I was liable if a printer got his hand
> > caught in the press while my book was running and he answered, "Well,
> > probably not." And then he thought for a moment and said, "Oh,
> > they'ld never come after you for that!" Early contracts limited my
> > liability to the income from royalties, and one publisher actually
> provided authors' insurance for a
> > modest premium. But no more.
> >
> >
> >
> > Well today, I got an author's contract for a paper I am contributed to
> > an academic collection that asked me to warrant that the work had been
> > commissioned by the publisher and was "work for hire". Now, work for
> hire
> > means that one's surrenders ALL rights to the work including the right
> > to claim it as one's own work. It's the kind of contract you sign
> > when you write jacket copy for a publisher. ( The publisher in this
> > case was Oxford University Press, in case any of you are thinking of
> > doing business with
> > them.) I am a wishy washy fellow, but somehow I could not sign a
> > document that said that my original work was "work for hire." Couldn't do
> it.
> >
> >
> >
> > It's too late for this work. I will have to sign the rights over to
> > my [young] collaborator, because she desperately needs the paper for
> > her career. But MAN! It got me to thinking. WHAT ABOUT self
> > publishing. With, say, Amazon" Does anybody on the list have any
> > experience with Amazon or other self publishing services that they would
> like to share?
> >
> >
> >
> > My Dad was a book publisher, and I grew up with conversations around
> > the dinner table about "developing authors" and trying to find new
> > authors, and how a few books might have to be published before a new
> author caught on.
> > They published Churchill's Memoires and Mein Kampf (!) and the Peterson
> > Field Guides, among many others. Now, it seems, publishers do very
> little,
> > and academic publishers, in particular, do nothing but scavenge off
> > the fetid bits coughed up the publish or perish system. Is is it time to
> dump
> > them? I am sure this is a party I am late to. Where do I get invited.
> >
> >
> >
> > Nick
> >
> >
> >
> > Nicholas S. Thompson
> >
> > Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> >
> > Clark University
> >
> > http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> >
> > http://www.cusf.org <http://www.cusf.org/>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe
> > at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
> > http://www.friam.org
>
>
> --
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> Principal, High Performance Coders
> Visiting Professor of Mathematics [hidden email]
> University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives,
> unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Professor of Mathematics [hidden email]
University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

Owen Densmore

Re: Self publishing

Administrator

In reply to this post by Gary Schiltz-4

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 3:26 PM, Gary Schiltz <[hidden email]> wrote:

Here is the core dump of the recently defunct "Code Quarterly" magazine (FRIAM connection: this was started by Peter Seibel, who is Fred Seibel's son). Of course, the target audience and contributers are geeks rather than scientists, so I'm not sure if there is much to learn for science journals...

;; Gary

Where?

-- Owen