[FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed
Russ Abbott
russ.abbott at gmail.com
Sun Jul 5 13:02:16 EDT 2020
I haven't been following this thread, so this may already have been
mentioned. But in case it hasn't: Springer has a free-book publishing
<https://www.springernature.com/gp/researchers/campaigns/celebrating-1000-open-access-books/promotion?sap-outbound-id=43C5094BD42094009CD4B6B1EB91145503C604AB&utm_source=hybris-campaign&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=000_RPR7473_0000003054_BBKK_AWA_CE02_GL_1000_OA_books2_Springer&utm_content=EN_internal_9962_20200705&mkt-key=42010A0550671EDA9BA9C3DA42DDB9EF>
promotion.
-- Russ Abbott
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 9:35 AM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Russ, Jochen,
>
> Thanks for what you wrote, below. I have never managed a book-length
> exposition of my ideas, so I particularly appreciate what you have
> accomplished. Perhaps the incentives are coming to be where they should
> be.
> Why should it be that others pay to be infected with my ideas? I don't
> share Glen's distaste for books, as opposed to papers. I think I have
> learned the most, over the years, from lengthy arguments, such as
> Williams's
> NATURAL SELECTION AND ADAPTATION and Sean Carroll's ENDLESS FORMS MOST
> BEAUTIFUL or even (I hate to admit it) Dawkins's THE SELFISH GENE, where
> the
> author has space to organize the papers we all know from a well developed
> point of view, or books like THE BEAK OF THE FINCH, or Waldrop's
> COMPLEXITY, which present biographies of a research program. I grant that
> leaning heavily on such works for one's understanding of the world makes
> one
> vulnerable And I would hate to live in a world in which everybody I talked
> to was reading only such works. (I need the Glens of the world.) But
> still, I think, such works give a perspective that cannot be obtained in
> any
> other way.
>
> So keep writing them!
>
> Nick
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> 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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>
> --
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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