<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000">I haven't been following this thread, so this may already have been mentioned. But in case it hasn't: Springer has a <a href="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">free-book publishing</a> promotion.</div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><font><u style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16.5px;line-height:20px"><br></u></font></div><div dir="ltr"><font><u style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16.5px;line-height:20px"> </u></font><span style="color:rgb(33,33,33);font-family:"Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:16.5px;line-height:24.75px"> </span>-- Russ Abbott <br>Professor, Computer Science<br>California State University, Los Angeles<br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 9:35 AM <<a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Russ, Jochen, <br>
<br>
Thanks for what you wrote, below. I have never managed a book-length<br>
exposition of my ideas, so I particularly appreciate what you have<br>
accomplished. Perhaps the incentives are coming to be where they should be.<br>
Why should it be that others pay to be infected with my ideas? I don't<br>
share Glen's distaste for books, as opposed to papers. I think I have<br>
learned the most, over the years, from lengthy arguments, such as Williams's<br>
NATURAL SELECTION AND ADAPTATION and Sean Carroll's ENDLESS FORMS MOST<br>
BEAUTIFUL or even (I hate to admit it) Dawkins's THE SELFISH GENE, where the<br>
author has space to organize the papers we all know from a well developed<br>
point of view, or books like THE BEAK OF THE FINCH, or Waldrop's<br>
COMPLEXITY, which present biographies of a research program. I grant that<br>
leaning heavily on such works for one's understanding of the world makes one<br>
vulnerable And I would hate to live in a world in which everybody I talked<br>
to was reading only such works. (I need the Glens of the world.) But<br>
still, I think, such works give a perspective that cannot be obtained in any<br>
other way. <br>
<br>
So keep writing them!<br>
<br>
Nick <br>
Nicholas Thompson<br>
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology<br>
Clark University<br>
<a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com" target="_blank">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a><br>
<a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Friam <<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>> On Behalf Of Russell Standish<br>
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 3:48 AM<br>
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a>><br>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed<br>
<br>
Being self-published hasn't stopped my book "Theory of Nothing" from being<br>
cited. According to Google Scholar, it has 22 citations, 9th on my list in<br>
terms of citation count, just after "Why Occams Razor", a peer reviewed<br>
paper on similar topics. It got a bit of a boost from Max Tegmark's book, as<br>
he singled it out as inspiration, kind of ironic when it was one of Max's<br>
"crazy papers" that inspired me to write "Why Occams Razor" and then "Theory<br>
of Nothing".<br>
<br>
I think you need to have a reason to publish a book. Making money is not one<br>
them - almost nobody makes money from writing books. Vanity publications<br>
("it looks good on the CV") is another one to avoid. Best bet is if you have<br>
a story or a topic that needs telling, and you think would be interesting to<br>
other people, then go for it. Marketing then becomes telling other people<br>
about it, advancing arguments from it in fora like this. With a bit of luck,<br>
it goes viral.<br>
<br>
One good reason for writing academic books is that it gives you expanded<br>
scope to explain your ideas more fully, and in less technically forbidding<br>
terms. Allows you to expand your readership beyond the narrow circle reading<br>
your peer revieed articles. But you probably want those peer reviewed<br>
articles to back up/draw upon your book work. That's probably the reason why<br>
old academics write books, and young ones write papers.<br>
<br>
In my case, I've self-published 3 books so far: "Theory of Nothing", which<br>
has sold over 1000 copies, and perhaps 2-3 times as many free downloads from<br>
my website and the usual pirate websites, but in no way does the royalties<br>
cover the time I put into it (unless being paid less than a Calcutta<br>
rickshaw driver was a career ambition); "Amoeba's Secret", a translation of<br>
a semi-autobiography by Bruno Marchal, which was about the clearest<br>
exposition he gave of his ideas, and "Magic Cottage", an Anthology of my<br>
son's writing, which was quite exquisite, and sadly something he's not<br>
really doing now. Magic Cottage proved to be more of a vanity publication<br>
than I thought it would be - but partly because he never took up my<br>
suggestion of leaving a copy around his college room, now apartment, where<br>
it could act as a conversation starter. I also envisaged him using the book<br>
when going for jobs that might require writing skills, but it seems he<br>
hasn't needed to do that to date.<br>
<br>
<br>
Cheers<br>
<br>
On Sat, Jul 04, 2020 at 10:25:03PM +0200, Jochen Fromm wrote:<br>
> Thanks. Yes, self-publishing is an option. I am looking for an <br>
> official publisher mainly for one reason, namely that other scientists <br>
> and researchers can cite it, since I still cling to the illusion that <br>
> someone would actually do it. Normally self-published texts are not <br>
> considered as reliable or trustworthy sources. I didn't expect that <br>
> finding a decent publisher would be so difficult.<br>
> <br>
> -J.<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> -------- Original message --------<br>
> From: Tom Johnson <<a href="mailto:tom@jtjohnson.com" target="_blank">tom@jtjohnson.com</a>><br>
> Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00)<br>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <br>
> <<a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com" target="_blank">friam@redfish.com</a>><br>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed<br>
> <br>
> Jochen:<br>
> The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.<br>
> <br>
> Background: I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own<br>
Publisher"<br>
> for nearly 15 years. There are, in my opinion, some major problems <br>
> with all publishers today. It starts with control of the copyright. <br>
> I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to your <br>
> work. It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers <br>
> will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- <br>
> forms of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe. Sometimes<br>
quite literally.<br>
> <br>
> Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and <br>
> you, not being as well known as Stephen King or Daniel Steele -- the <br>
> publisher will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a <br>
> mention in its catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon. <br>
> Given that, a 5 percent royalty should be seen as a con.<br>
> <br>
> Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to <br>
> format and produce the book yourself. I have used Lulu.com for years. <br>
> It is especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and <br>
> PDF editions. Again the<br>
> advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and change) the <br>
> prices and to a degree the royalties. Also, Lulu and Amazon handle <br>
> all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay <br>
> directly and quickly. I also use a very good, high quality digital<br>
printer in Albuquerque for paperback editions.<br>
> It is Lithexcel. It handles all the printing (one copy to any number) <br>
> quickly, along with all the fulfillment and accounting. The folks <br>
> there will also, for only $25, set up your book in the Amazon <br>
> inventory search engine. Finally, there is Amazon's self-publishing <br>
> arm. While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects<br>
is in your hands.<br>
> <br>
> Here's the problem/challenge with all of these. YOU have to do the <br>
> marketing/ publicity/promotion. But so what? If you today sign with <br>
> any publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.<br>
> <br>
> Hope this helps. Feel free to contact me with questions. Also you <br>
> might want to see <a href="https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc</a> Tom<br>
> <br>
> ============================================<br>
> Tom Johnson - <a href="mailto:tom@jtjohnson.com" target="_blank">tom@jtjohnson.com</a><br>
> Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA<br>
> 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)<br>
> NM Foundation for Open Government<br>
> Check out It's The People's Data <br>
> ============================================<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> <br>
> [icon-] Virus-free. <a href="http://www.avast.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">www.avast.com</a><br>
> <br>
> <br>
> <br>
> On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <<a href="mailto:jofr@cas-group.net" target="_blank">jofr@cas-group.net</a>> wrote:<br>
> <br>
> At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers<br>
> Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon &<br>
> Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of<br>
> money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP<br>
and<br>
> MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content<br>
from<br>
> professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of<br>
20.<br>
> <br>
> At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who<br>
> publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it.<br>
Open<br>
> access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access<br>
book"<br>
> at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that<br>
other<br>
> people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own<br>
work.<br>
> <br>
> For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in<br>
> Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They<br>
are<br>
> really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or<br>
wait for<br>
> a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have<br>
asked,<br>
> and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/<br>
> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/</a><br>
> novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak<br>
> <br>
> -J.<br>
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-- <br>
<br>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
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</blockquote></div>