[FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Sat Jul 4 19:59:27 EDT 2020

Let me know what you need this weekend.

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

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

Ed
_______________________

Ed Angel

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

1017 Sierra Pinon
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505-984-0136 (home)		 	angel at cs.unm.edu <mailto:angel at cs.unm.edu>
505-453-4944 (cell) 				http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel <http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel>

> On Jul 4, 2020, at 5:47 PM, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com> wrote:
> 
> Ed, 
> 
> I just ordered your 8th edition from Pearson <https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/ANGEL-Pearson-e-Text-Interactive-Computer-Graphics-Access-Card-8th-Edition/PGM2160099.html?tab=order> as I was blown away by the awesomeness of the new cover. :-)
> 
> The confirmation email tells me a *physical* access card is being shipped for my digital order. 
> 
> First time I've seen this - are physical access cards for digital products common for textbooks these days? I just thought it was lazy programming in the shopping cart requiring a physical address for a digital product.
> 
> I have an urgent need to use your book this weekend and can not wait for delivery. I will be calling the author directly while I await arrival :-) It actually has to do with implementing the cover and getting the decentralized capture and rendering to realtime which hinges on realtime depth-image based rendering using spherical light fields while skipping any 3D cartesian intermediate shenanigans. Thank you for your help so far!
> 
> -S
> 
> PS, I also checked out Amazon and they appear to be the same with the physical card. 
> 
> PPS: 8th edition isn't the default choice edition on Amazon or Pearson when searching. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 3:22 PM Edward Angel <angel at cs.unm.edu <mailto:angel at cs.unm.edu>> wrote:
> I’ve been a book author since 1972 and a textbook author since 1989. My computer graphics textbook has been the most popular book in the area for 20 years and just came out in its eighth edition with various editions being available in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian. Sadly, the book business has changed over that time; changed in way that is bad for almost everyone, especially authors. I think you’re faced with a lot of bad choices. I hope some of the following will prove helpful. And if not helpful, at least interesting.
> 
> Before I forget, you might enjoy reading of my adventures writing the first edition of my present textbook while on sabbatical in Venezuela, Ecuador, Hong Kong and Nepal. There’s a pointer to it on my home page www.cs.unm.edu/~angel <http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel> 
> 
> When I had to pick a publisher, I knew the editors and  local book reps at Academic Press, Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall and Benjamin/Cummings. They dominated the CS field and did so largely because they had editors who knew the field, excellent book reps who knew the needs of the faculty and students, a willingness to invest in a book, and in-house production. None of these exist anymore and, as Tom pointed out, you're largely on your own. It’s unfortunate if you care about how many copies get sold and your royalties. I have many friends who self-published in the past. It’s a lot of work either way but I prefer to put my effort into content and not type-setting or marketing. None of my self-published friends have ever sold many books.
> 
> I had three excellent editors over 20 years. When I did my first edition, my editor hired a development editor at great expense to improve the quality of my writing. She worked with the CS faculty and grad students at Caltech and Stanford. It made a huge difference. Now almost none of these jobs exist within the publishers. All production is contracted out to the low bidders (art, typesetting, copy editing, etc) most of whom are in India. I no longer have an editor. There is one person working for the publusher with whom I communicate with to try to get things done correctly with the contractors. This last edition has been a long painful experience. 
> 
> So what happened? Books were always expensive for students, especially when sold through college bookstores. Then used book sellers appeared and Asian students started importing low cost Asian versions of the standard textbooks. Under US copyright laws, both are legal. The publishers responded by upping prices which reduced sales even more.
> 
> And then came electronic media. At first, my book, like most others, was still print-only. But the publisher sent perfect unwatermarked pdfs to all the schools what adopted the book for use by students with special needs. Wasn’t long before those pdfs made it to the Web. Then they had a electronic version and a kindle version that students could rent for a semester or year. The publisher, the largest in the business, was clueless about web security and had no idea that Kindles are not secure. Very quickly, the book appeared (with most of the other cs texts and various best sellers) on a Russian website as a “public service.” End of paid sales.
> 
> The new edition is only available in electronic form and the publisher claims it is only available on a secure site. I doubt anyone on this list believes that.
> 
> Although I never in the past had issues with the publisher having the copyright, which was pretty standard, I wish I had it now. Since there is no hope of making significant royalties now (we used), my coauthor and I would like to put the book out for free on our websites rather than having it appear on various illegal Russian sites known to most students.
> 
> Personally, I no longer care about royalties but the long term issue I worry about is why would any young person write a textbook. It’s a huge amount of work and usually not something that in the academic world is valued as highly as research papers and grant funding.
> 
> Ed
> _______________________
> 
> Ed Angel
> 
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
> 
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home)		 	angel at cs.unm.edu <mailto:angel at cs.unm.edu>
> 505-453-4944 (cell) 				http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel <http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel>- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
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