The disappearing virtual library
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Here's an article I came across today:
Opinion: Academic Publishing Is Broken | The Scientist http://the-scientist.com/2012/03/19/opinion-academic-publishing-is-broken/ This started me thinking about what services publishers perform in general. As this article points out, for the scientific community, some publications are necessary for historical reasons. Also, I can see great value in peer review. But, what is to prevent someone from setting up a web site devoted to eBooks not subject to the publishers' restrictions ? E.g., self-published books or books marketed by "ebook agents". By taking the copyrights out of the current publishers' hands, presumably, the prices could be drastically lowered while the authors could get higher fees and/or royalties ! This would not do away with the need for editors. But do editors need to be employees of the existing publishers ? So, what are the compelling arguments for the ability of publishers to maintain their control over content delivered electronically ? Joe -- "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1913. ============================================================ 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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This has already been done. See, for instance, Amazon's CreateSpace
(previously known as BookSurge). There is also a competitor based in Canada, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten. Both paper and eBook is supported. Editing, typesetting you can source yourself, or you can avail yourself of their services. Another source of technical editing services I'm associated with is Online English. They're not the cheapest, but they do take quality seriously (manuscripts are edited by native English speakers who either have an editing background, or a technical background - eg ex-academics). For Theory of Nothing, I used CreateSpace, and recently did a Kindle version. It has been available as a free PDF since a year after its publication date, prior to that, the PDF was available for sale at the price of the book royalty (Kindle version is not much higher), and bundled with the physical book sale. I skimped on the editing services, because it didn't make business sense (editing costs would have consumed several years worth of revenue). Alas, it shows, but my readers mostly forgive me :). I found: a) Physical books sold well - better than expectations even. b) The sales of the unencrypted PDF were very poor (about 5% of the physical). And few physical book purchasers claimed their PDF version. c) Free PDF downloads went through the roof (about 5 times as many downloads as physical copies sold, before it was torrented, and I lost track of the downloads :). The availability of free downloads didn't affect sales of the physical book (maybe it sustained it, perhaps). d) Sales of the Kindle ebook have been poor. This is somewhat surprising, as the rendering of the free PDF on the Kindle reader is attrocious. Maybe very few of my readers bother with Kindle - not sure - there is a review somewhere of my PDF book on a Kindle out there in the internet, so obviously people tried it. In conclusion - I would still do a physical copy of a book as well as an ebook. Ebook monetisation is still a problem. Cheers On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 10:09:39AM -0600, Joseph Spinden wrote: > Here's an article I came across today: > > > Opinion: Academic Publishing Is Broken | The Scientist > > http://the-scientist.com/2012/03/19/opinion-academic-publishing-is-broken/ > > > > This started me thinking about what services publishers perform in > general. As this article points out, for the scientific community, > some publications are necessary for historical reasons. Also, I can > see great value in peer review. > > But, what is to prevent someone from setting up a web site devoted > to eBooks not subject to the publishers' restrictions ? E.g., > self-published books or books marketed by "ebook agents". By taking > the copyrights out of the current publishers' hands, presumably, the > prices could be drastically lowered while the authors could get > higher fees and/or royalties ! > > This would not do away with the need for editors. But do editors > need to be employees of the existing publishers ? > > So, what are the compelling arguments for the ability of publishers > to maintain their control over content delivered electronically ? > > Joe > > > -- > > "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." > > -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1913. > > > ============================================================ > 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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Although I am no fan of the present broken publishing system, the recent posts have led me to think about the steps that an author has to go through to get a book out. If you look at what it takes, all the proposed alternatives don't solve the problem for an author. I'm addressing my comments mostly to textbooks but it's not much different for trade books or even for other endeavors like filmmaking.
To start with, it takes six months to a year of effort to write a good first draft. Then the publication process can involves the following entities: 1. Editor 2. Development editor (especially for a first edition) 3. Reviewers (maybe 5-7) 4. Production manager (responsible for among other things securing copyrights and permissions) 5. Typesetter 6. Copy Editor 7. Proof Reader 8. Printer (if not an ebook) 9. Marketing and Distribution At the present, all of the first 8 eight tasks except for 1. and perhaps 4. are contracted out by the publisher, so as Russell points out, the author could get these services done without the publisher. However, there can be considerable expense involved and at this point you would have not only spent a the six months to a year writing but also paying for these services and spending lots of time contracting and supervising the process. And at this point you haven't received any royalties and probably have no way to market your work, a step which is crucial and has not been addressed in these posts. Nor do you have any reason to believe that your work will be successful enough to pay for the above expenses or to compensate you for your time. So even if the author isn't seeking to get rich or even to make any money, I don't see any good alternatives for most of us to the present broken model. Even though my royalties are a small fraction of the selling price and the price students have to pay for books is outrageous, at least from the author's persective, my up front costs are minimal (mostly my time) and I can focus on the parts I enjoy. 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 On Apr 20, 2012, at 6:33 PM, Russell Standish wrote:
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Re: The disappearing virtual library
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About five years ago, I was in the NYC audience of a speech given by Don Lamm (whom many of you might know--lives in Santa Fe, former chmn of the board of W. W. Norton). The audience was mixed authors and publishing types. Among other things, Don was saying, authors: you better provide your own copy editing now, because publishers aren't going to do it.
After he finished, my hand was first up. I said: I've been my own typesetter for ten years. I do my own proofreading, indexing, etc. Publishing promotion is simply risible, so whatever promotion gets done, gets done by me. Now you're telling me I need to provide my own copy editing too? What possible value added is a publisher to me? Why should I share a damn cent with them? Much stirring and harrumphing among the publishing types, and one finally said, well, we are a filter for quality. Be serious, I retorted. One more quality vampire book? Okay, they conceded, we can distribute. That they can. But I have to trust them that they'll tell the truth about sales. They have been known to fib, in their own favor, of course. I long ago decided not to mind that the top editors were having wonderful lunches at the Four Seasons daily while I waited for royalties in six-month increments, those computed only three months after a pay period closed, and with royalties held back for "returns." But I do mind their poormouthing and whining. It is surely the most backward industry in America. On Apr 21, 2012, at 9:10 AM, Edward Angel wrote:
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Re: The disappearing virtual library
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The situation for complex textbooks is quite different from the
situation for other kinds of books. For nearly 20 years Ruth and I did ALL of the work on our physics textbook, which was possible only because we have very strong computer skills. We also did most of the marketing. It was only with the 3rd edition that the publisher put in sizable resources in the form of much improved layout design, colorizing our thousands of two-color diagrams, highly skilled detailed copy editing, reviews, and marketing. We provided LaTeX that was relatively simple in terms of layout but contained all of the many thousands of equations, but they paid for the design to be implemented in the LaTeX imports of our text. They also paid for the conversion to an ebook format, something that currently is highly non-trivial starting from LaTeX. Most authors of physics texts do not have the skills to have gotten as far as we did before the 3rd edition, and we couldn't have gone the last mile that led to the much improved 3rd edition. Certainly we could have done something not too shabby completely on our own, self-publishing, but as I reported in earlier notes, it was absolutely crucial that the known Wiley imprimatur be on the book; otherwise no one would have paid any attention to it. Also, the Wiley name means to potential adopters that the book will be available a couple of years from now, and maintained and corrected -- that the web site won't just disappear. I have no doubt that even complex projects of our kind will eventually lend themselves to self-publishing, and I have little doubt that eventually the imprimatur/certification role of major publishers will fade too, as alternative reviewing mechanisms take firmer hold. But I just wanted to emphasize that in the real world of publishing intro physics textbooks we ain't there yet. Bruce ============================================================ 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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Well, maybe. But I'd be willing to bet that if a big-name physicist were to publish a physics text, with the intent that it become the standard for teaching his/her physics specialty, Wiley would find themselves sucking vacuum.
Say, for example, that George Smoot wanted to self-publish a grad-level textbook on cosmic anisotropies...
I agree, though, that for the foreseeable future lesser-known/lesser-quality scientists will need to rely on a big-name publisher to attract the cache necessary to become an accepted textbook author. Fortunately, in the relatively short period of time that ebooks have come into their own, the same is no longer true for fiction authors.
--Doug On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Bruce Sherwood <[hidden email]> wrote:
The situation for complex textbooks is quite different from the ============================================================ 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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In reply to this post by Joe Spinden
all this stuff requires time, work and risks. Who does it for free? Bob Lancaster On Apr 20, 2012, at 10:09 AM, Joseph Spinden wrote: > Here's an article I came across today: > > > Opinion: Academic Publishing Is Broken | The Scientist > > http://the-scientist.com/2012/03/19/opinion-academic-publishing-is-broken/ > > > > This started me thinking about what services publishers perform in general. As this article points out, for the scientific community, some publications are necessary for historical reasons. Also, I can see great value in peer review. > > But, what is to prevent someone from setting up a web site devoted to eBooks not subject to the publishers' restrictions ? E.g., self-published books or books marketed by "ebook agents". By taking the copyrights out of the current publishers' hands, presumably, the prices could be drastically lowered while the authors could get higher fees and/or royalties ! > > This would not do away with the need for editors. But do editors need to be employees of the existing publishers ? > > So, what are the compelling arguments for the ability of publishers to maintain their control over content delivered electronically ? > > Joe > > > -- > > "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." > > -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1913. > > > ============================================================ > 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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Most definitely not me. --Doug
On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 1:19 PM, Robert Lancaster <[hidden email]> wrote:
Doug Roberts [hidden email] [hidden email] ============================================================ 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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In reply to this post by Bruce Sherwood
There is a crucial sociological issue that applied and still applies
with a vengeance in our own intro physics case. The intro "calculus-based" course taken by engineering and science students is very large in engineering schools, often involving 1000 or more students. It is a very complex course, typically involving many faculty and grad students, lecture-demo equipment, problem-solving recitations, and experimental labs. A very large number of people are involved. Moreover, there are very many stakeholders, including all the engineering departments and many science departments, and they all have to buy into any change. As a result there is enormous inertia to change. One physicist referred to change of this course as "parallel-parking an aircraft carrier". Although in recent decades there has been significant improvement around the country in the pedagogy of the course, the course content and accompanying widely-use textbooks have hardly changed for over 100 years, despite huge revolutions in the field of physics. It is as though the intro biology course didn't mention DNA. Our textbook admits that the 20th century happened, and we take a 20th-century perspective on intro-level physics. We even admit from the start that matter is composed of atoms. This is considered to be incredibly radical. The Wiley imprimatur was extremely important in the struggle to make change. Because of this, our case isn't entirely representative. Yet the complexity of the enterprise and the expectations of what an intro physics textbook should look like haven't changed. It's fine to assert that faculty should be willing to adopt a free book they find on the web, but in my discipline of physics it's just not the case. Bruce On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 2:21 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[hidden email]> wrote: > Given the rapid advancement in digital publishing opportunities over the > past few years, I'm not sure exactly how much more difficult this is for a > "lesser known" scientist. The conversion of LaTeX to ebook problem remains, > but if you are in a field that does not need carefully-formatted specialized > characters, or if you are starting from scratch in the current landscape, > the whole things seems straightforward... in my painfully naive worldview: > > You are an lesser-known, but active, member of a field, involved in both > research and teaching organizations. Over the past 20 years, teaching > organizations now exist in every academic discipline I am aware of, and I > assume that membership in at least one teaching organization is a reasonable > norm for contemporary people considering writing a textbook. Because you are > thus active, you have many friends who teach classes. If you get only 5 of > these friends to agree to try the book, you are probably in good shape. For > intro science classes, you are likely looking at classrooms with between 100 > and 800 students, but lets say only 100 to get a minimum. Including your > class, that means you sell at least 600 copies on day 1. The sales then > drop, as electronic versions get shared, but some students each semester > still do what they are supposed to and pay for the book, lets say 200 a > semester after the first. If the book is any good, your can give some > conference talks to promote it, and your friends will encourage their > friends to adopt it. Frankly, after your friends, your target market is > graduate students teaching a course for the first time, so you need to be > nice to the grad students you meet at conferences. If the books were selling > for $20-$40 each, this seems like a good way to get return on investment in > an electronic model that will give you 50-70% return. > > Note, if you and one of your friends teach particularly large sections (say > 800 students a semester), the model seems viable to me on that basis alone. > I am at a pretty small school, and I still teach 300 Intro Psych students in > a typical year. Obviously, the return on a graduate level text would be much > lower, but only because the sales are much lower. Maybe you would need > twenty friends to give it a test-run... but sales of advanced texts are > always much smaller, and so profits lower. That is part of the game either > way, print or electronic. > > None of this was possible 20 years ago, only some of it was possible 5 years > ago, but (I think) it is all possible now, even for a 'lesser-known' member > of a field. Is there something I am missing? > > Also note - this is completely different from the issue of what it would > take for other members of your discipline to consider you a "successful > textbook author." That is a completely social problem, and has nothing to do > with the business models. > > > > On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 02:46 PM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote: > > Well, maybe. > > But I'd be willing to bet that if a big-name physicist were to publish a > physics text, with the intent that it become the standard for teaching > his/her physics specialty, Wiley would find themselves sucking vacuum. > > Say, for example, that George Smoot wanted to self-publish > a grad-level textbook on cosmic anisotropies... > > I agree, though, that for the foreseeable future lesser-known/lesser-quality > scientists will need to rely on a big-name publisher to attract the cache > necessary to become an accepted textbook author. Fortunately, in the > relatively short period of time that ebooks have come into their own, the > same is no longer true for fiction authors. > > --Doug > > On Sat, Apr 21, 2012 at 12:14 PM, Bruce Sherwood <[hidden email]> > wrote: >> >> The situation for complex textbooks is quite different from the >> situation for other kinds of books. >> >> For nearly 20 years Ruth and I did ALL of the work on our physics >> textbook, which was possible only because we have very strong computer >> skills. We also did most of the marketing. It was only with the 3rd >> edition that the publisher put in sizable resources in the form of >> much improved layout design, colorizing our thousands of two-color >> diagrams, highly skilled detailed copy editing, reviews, and >> marketing. We provided LaTeX that was relatively simple in terms of >> layout but contained all of the many thousands of equations, but they >> paid for the design to be implemented in the LaTeX imports of our >> text. They also paid for the conversion to an ebook format, something >> that currently is highly non-trivial starting from LaTeX. >> >> Most authors of physics texts do not have the skills to have gotten as >> far as we did before the 3rd edition, and we couldn't have gone the >> last mile that led to the much improved 3rd edition. >> >> Certainly we could have done something not too shabby completely on >> our own, self-publishing, but as I reported in earlier notes, it was >> absolutely crucial that the known Wiley imprimatur be on the book; >> otherwise no one would have paid any attention to it. Also, the Wiley >> name means to potential adopters that the book will be available a >> couple of years from now, and maintained and corrected -- that the web >> site won't just disappear. >> >> I have no doubt that even complex projects of our kind will eventually >> lend themselves to self-publishing, and I have little doubt that >> eventually the imprimatur/certification role of major publishers will >> fade too, as alternative reviewing mechanisms take firmer hold. But I >> just wanted to emphasize that in the real world of publishing intro >> physics textbooks we ain't there yet. >> >> Bruce >> >> > ============================================================ > 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 > > Eric Charles > > Professional Student and > Assistant Professor of Psychology > Penn State University > Altoona, PA 16601 > > > > ============================================================ > 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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Administrator
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Another input from Harvard: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/24/1816217/harvard-journals-too-expensive-switch-to-open-access
"Harvard recently sent a memo to faculty saying, 'We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain publishers (called "providers") to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals.' The memo goes on to describe the situation in more detail and suggests options to faculty and students for the future that includessubmitting articles to open-access journals. If Harvard paves the way with this, how long until other academic bodies follow suit and cut off companies such as Elsevier?"
============================================================ 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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I think the following article by Lewis Lapham would be of interest to many followers of this thread: Dean Gerber From: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2012 4:33 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The disappearing virtual library Another input from Harvard: http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/24/1816217/harvard-journals-too-expensive-switch-to-open-access
"Harvard recently sent a memo to faculty saying, 'We write to communicate an untenable situation facing the Harvard Library. Many large journal publishers have made the scholarly communication environment fiscally unsustainable and academically restrictive. This situation is exacerbated by efforts of certain
publishers (called "providers") to acquire, bundle, and increase the pricing on journals.' The memo goes on to describe the situation in more detail and suggests options to faculty and students for the future that includessubmitting articles to open-access journals. If Harvard paves the way with this, how long until other academic bodies follow suit and cut off companies such as Elsevier?"
============================================================ 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 |
Re: The disappearing virtual library
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In reply to this post by Owen Densmore
One of the first casualties of the increasing cost of journals was books. When the prices of journals that faculty deemed absolutely necessary to have in the library went up, there was no money left to buy new books or other materials.
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 On Apr 24, 2012, at 4:33 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:
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