[FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed
thompnickson2 at gmail.com
thompnickson2 at gmail.com
Sun Jul 5 12:35:48 EDT 2020
Russ, Jochen,
Thanks for what you wrote, below. I have never managed a book-length
exposition of my ideas, so I particularly appreciate what you have
accomplished. Perhaps the incentives are coming to be where they should be.
Why should it be that others pay to be infected with my ideas? I don't
share Glen's distaste for books, as opposed to papers. I think I have
learned the most, over the years, from lengthy arguments, such as Williams's
NATURAL SELECTION AND ADAPTATION and Sean Carroll's ENDLESS FORMS MOST
BEAUTIFUL or even (I hate to admit it) Dawkins's THE SELFISH GENE, where the
author has space to organize the papers we all know from a well developed
point of view, or books like THE BEAK OF THE FINCH, or Waldrop's
COMPLEXITY, which present biographies of a research program. I grant that
leaning heavily on such works for one's understanding of the world makes one
vulnerable And I would hate to live in a world in which everybody I talked
to was reading only such works. (I need the Glens of the world.) But
still, I think, such works give a perspective that cannot be obtained in any
other way.
So keep writing them!
Nick
Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Russell Standish
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 3:48 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed
Being self-published hasn't stopped my book "Theory of Nothing" from being
cited. According to Google Scholar, it has 22 citations, 9th on my list in
terms of citation count, just after "Why Occams Razor", a peer reviewed
paper on similar topics. It got a bit of a boost from Max Tegmark's book, as
he singled it out as inspiration, kind of ironic when it was one of Max's
"crazy papers" that inspired me to write "Why Occams Razor" and then "Theory
of Nothing".
I think you need to have a reason to publish a book. Making money is not one
them - almost nobody makes money from writing books. Vanity publications
("it looks good on the CV") is another one to avoid. Best bet is if you have
a story or a topic that needs telling, and you think would be interesting to
other people, then go for it. Marketing then becomes telling other people
about it, advancing arguments from it in fora like this. With a bit of luck,
it goes viral.
One good reason for writing academic books is that it gives you expanded
scope to explain your ideas more fully, and in less technically forbidding
terms. Allows you to expand your readership beyond the narrow circle reading
your peer revieed articles. But you probably want those peer reviewed
articles to back up/draw upon your book work. That's probably the reason why
old academics write books, and young ones write papers.
In my case, I've self-published 3 books so far: "Theory of Nothing", which
has sold over 1000 copies, and perhaps 2-3 times as many free downloads from
my website and the usual pirate websites, but in no way does the royalties
cover the time I put into it (unless being paid less than a Calcutta
rickshaw driver was a career ambition); "Amoeba's Secret", a translation of
a semi-autobiography by Bruno Marchal, which was about the clearest
exposition he gave of his ideas, and "Magic Cottage", an Anthology of my
son's writing, which was quite exquisite, and sadly something he's not
really doing now. Magic Cottage proved to be more of a vanity publication
than I thought it would be - but partly because he never took up my
suggestion of leaving a copy around his college room, now apartment, where
it could act as a conversation starter. I also envisaged him using the book
when going for jobs that might require writing skills, but it seems he
hasn't needed to do that to date.
Cheers
On Sat, Jul 04, 2020 at 10:25:03PM +0200, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an
> official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists
> and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that
> someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not
> considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that
> finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.
>
> -J.
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Tom Johnson <tom at jtjohnson.com>
> Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed
>
> Jochen:
> The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.
>
> Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own
Publisher"
> for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems
> with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright.
> I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your
> work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers
> will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL --
> forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes
quite literally.
>
> Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and
> you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the
> publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a
> mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon.
> Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.
>
> Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to
> format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years.
> It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and
> PDF editions. Again the
> advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the
> prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle
> all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay
> directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital
printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions.
> It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number)
> quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks
> there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon
> inventory search engine. Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing
> arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects
is in your hands.
>
> Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the
> marketing/ publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with
> any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.
>
> Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you
> might want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc Tom
>
> ============================================
> Tom Johnson - tom at jtjohnson.com
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
> 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
> NM Foundation for Open Government
> Check out It's The People's Data
> ============================================
>
>
>
> [icon-] Virus-free. www.avast.com
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>
> At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers
> Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon &
> Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of
> money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP
and
> MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content
from
> professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of
20.
>
> At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who
> publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it.
Open
> access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access
book"
> at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that
other
> people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own
work.
>
> For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in
> Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They
are
> really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or
wait for
> a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have
asked,
> and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
> https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/
> novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak
>
> -J.
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--
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Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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