Thanks, looks promising. I believe the promotion is misleading, though. It seems to be a kind of lottery because normally Open Access publishing at Springer costs about 15.000 $. Who I is willing to spend so much money? The system is broken. https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books/books/pricing-J. -------- Original message --------From: Russ Abbott <russ.abb...@gmail.com> Date: 7/5/20 19:03 (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed 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 promotion. -- Russ Abbott Professor, Computer ScienceCalifornia State University, Los AngelesOn Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 9:35 AM <thompnicks...@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 thompnicks...@gmail.com https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ -----Original Message----- From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of Russell Standish Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 3:48 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@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 <t...@jtjohnson.com> > Date: 7/4/20 20:10 (GMT+01:00) > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > <friam@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 - t...@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 <j...@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. > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam > un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > > - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn > GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders hpco...@hpcoders.com.au http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . 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