|
Hola,
Hasta donde yo se, el tema de publicar sobre temas
académicos y científicos no se analiza mucho entre nosotros. ¿O
sí?
Ligia
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Reis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2005 1:18 PM
Subject: TP Msg. #656 SELF-PUBLISHING - POTENTIAL BENEFITS AND RISKS
"There are a number of ways that you can gain or lose by self-publishing a
textbook or instructional material. Ways that are among the most relevant
for college instructors are indicated in this chapter along with factors to
weigh when considering options-i.e., determining the benefit/risk ratio for a
particular project. This information should help you when deciding whether
to self-publish a particular project."
* * * * * * TOMORROW'S PROFESSOR(SM) MAILING LIST desk-top faculty development one hundred times a year Over 23,750 subscribers Over 650 postings Over 650 academic institutions Over 100 countries Sponsored by THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING http://ctl.stanford.edu An archive of all past postings (with a two week delay) can be found at: http://ctl.stanford.edu/Tomprof/index.shtml * * * * * Folks: The posting below looks at the advantages and disadvantages to faculty of self-publishing books.. It is from Chapter, Chapter 2: Self-Publishing Has Potential Benefits and Risks, in Self-Publishing:Textbooks and Instructional Materials: A Practical Guide to Successful-and Respectable-Self-publishing by Franklin H. Silverman, Ph.D. Atlantic Path Publishing, Copyright © 2004 by Atlantic Path Publishing. All rights reserved. Atlantic Path Publishing, P.O. Box 1556, Gloucester, MA 01931-1556 [www.atlanticpathpublishing.com]. Reprinted with permission. Regards, Rick Reis [EMAIL PROTECTED] UP NEXT: Student Services for Distance Education Students Tomorrow's Academic Careers -------------------------------------- 1,1924 ---------------------------------- SELF-PUBLISHING - POTENTIAL BENEFITS AND RISKS Self-publishing, like all activities, has risks and can yield both benefits and losses. If you find that the potential benefits of self-publishing a textbook or academic material appear to outweigh the risks, then self-publishing is worth considering. However, you also will need to determine the benefit/risk ration for self-publishing each particular book or material, because this ratio is unlikely to be the same for every project. That is, self-publishing could be advantageous in some cases and not in others. There are a number of ways that you can gain or lose by self-publishing a textbook or instructional material. Ways that are among the most relevant for college instructors are indicated in this chapter along with factors to weigh when considering options-i.e., determining the benefit/risk ratio for a particular project. This information should help you when deciding whether to self-publish a particular project. Potential Benefits of Self-Publishing Many academics have self-published more than one academic work. They did so again because the benefits they derived from doing so outweighed the losses. This is certainly the reason that I have continued to self-publish. Some of the benefits from self-publishing include the following. * Providing information or tools that otherwise might not be available to others * Retaining control over price, form, length, and content * Making it unnecessary to cope with contractual matters, such as the "satisfactory manuscript" clause * Controlling the length of time that a textbook or instructional material stays in print * Authorizing revisions to keep textbooks and instructional materials current * Retaining the copyright * Controlling reprint rights * Shortening the time lag between the completion of a project and its publication* Generating greater income than from royalties and rights sales * Controlling marketing and promotion * Learning new skills * Benefiting indirectly from family participation * Having pleasure! This list is not intended to be exhaustive or to dictate priorities. Implications of these items are considered next. Providing Information Not Otherwise Available Textbook publishers, because of their bottom-line orientation, may be unwilling to publish some textbooks and instructional materials that could be helpful (perhaps even extremely helpful) to students. One reason may be that their author(s) are unable to document a market of adequate size for publishing to be profitable. By self-publishing such a textbook or instructional material, you are likely to make a contribution (perhaps even a substantial one) to your field. Another reason may be that the publisher rejected the manuscript because some of the material was highly controversial-i.e., not mainstream or politically correct. Self-publishing might enable you to contribute nationally to the discussion of issues about which you have strong feelings. Controlling Price, Form, Length, and Content The publisher has the final word on the form, content, and length of a book or material. Consequently, if the author is not the publisher and the author and publisher degree on cost, form, length, and/or content, the publisher's preferences usually will prevail. Decisions that textbook publishers make regarding cost, form, length, and content usually are dictated mainly by what customers want or expect. Another factor is the amount of income that a book or material has to generate to be profitable. Furthermore, the publisher may require a book to be a particular length so that it can be sold for a particular price. Length is determined through research on what customers regard as appropriate for a course. The content of a book also can be influenced by a publisher's bottom line. To maximize adoptions of a textbook, for example, a publisher may insist that the content an organization be traditional. A publisher may also insist that any points of view (or biases) the author has that could reduce adoptions be eliminated. However, it is possible that the author's points of view, which must be declared, are more strongly supported by research than traditional views. Avoiding the "Satisfactory Manuscript" Clause All book and material publishing contracts contain what is referred to as the "satisfactory manuscript" clause. This clause states that the publisher can refuse to publish a book or material that, in its judgment, is not satisfactory in form and/or content. Some manuscripts are substandard and not salable as written. However, publishers have unfortunately misused this clause to escape having to publish books and materials for reasons not legitimately related to form or content. Textbook publishers have been known to use the satisfactory manuscript clause to escape having to publish a book for any reason. Perhaps the market for that book has been satisfied by another one of the publisher's titles, for instance. Or the cost of publishing the work will make it unprofitable. Some publishers invoking the satisfactory manuscript clause even demand that the author return his or her advance with interest! If you are planning to self-publish a textbook or instructional material, you will not have this problem. You are the one who decides whether the book or material gets published. You can publish it even if the niche it was intended to fill is considerably smaller than when you began the project. And you are the one-for better or worse-who judges the quality of your work. Controlling How Long the Work Is In Print A textbook publisher may declare a book or material out of print when it no longer sells a particular number of copies in a year. For a textbook, this number can be as low as 500. A self-publisher can keep a book or material in print for as long as it sells any copies, however, particularly if individual copies are printed on demand or in short print runs or if the book or material is distributed electronically (e.g., as downloadable files on the Internet). It can be advantageous to you, incidentally, if your publisher keeps your textbook or instructional material in print indefinitely by using print-on-demand (POD) technology. Your publisher could then reduce competition for one of its other textbooks by preventing yours from being revised and marketed by another publisher. A self-publisher would never run into this situation, because he or she would own the copyright and could, therefore, revise and market the book or material in any lawful way that he or she desired. Authorizing Revisions A textbook publisher is unlikely to permit a book or material to be revised unless it is selling a certain minimum number of copies a year. For a textbook, this number could be high, as many as five thousand or more. A publisher also may refuse to authorize a revision for other reasons, for example, if it has acquired another title for the course that has more adoptions. Textbooks in most fields must be revised periodically to continue to be adopted. Consequently, not revising a textbook periodically is likely to kill it, regardless of its merits as a teaching tool. A self-publisher can revise a textbook or instructional material whenever a revision seems to be needed. In fact, he or she can do so almost continuously, particularly if the textbook or instructional material can be either published on the Internet or printed on demand. Retaining Copyright A textbook or instructional material that you author is your property. Amendments to the Copyright Act of 1976 give you and your heirs the exclusive right to exploit the book or material until 70 years after your death. By signing a publishing contract, you transfer ownership of it to the publisher. You lose very little by doing so if the publisher pays you a fair royalty and does an adequate job marketing your book or material. However, based on my own experience and that of many members of the Text and Academic Authors Association, this often does not happen, particularly for a textbook or instructional material that publisher assumes does not have the potential to become a best seller. If you self-publish a textbook or instructional material, you retain the ownership of copyright. Consequently, you can market it in any way you want, including selling it to a textbook publisher. Controlling Subsidiary Rights If someone wants to quote portions of your book or material in a publication, and that use is not permitted by the "fair use" doctrine of the copyright law (see Chapter 10), he or she must get the permission of the copyright owner. Consequently, by transferring copyright to a publisher, the authors essentially loses control over who gets permission to quote from his or her book or otherwise use the material. In fact, as author you lose the ability even to quote extensively from your own work without the publisher's permission. The author receives only a percentage (probably 50 percent) of the permissions fees that are paid. Authors who self-publish a textbook or instructional material retain copyright, and thus retain control over reprint rights as well as other subsidiary rights. Getting into Print Quickly It usually takes a minimum of nine months to publish a textbook or instructional material after a publisher has accepted the manuscript for publication. Much of this time is consumed by the manuscript waiting its turn for something to be done to it (e.g., copyediting). By undertaking or outsourcing many of the production tasks, a self-publisher often can shorten this interval. Making More Money Your textbook or instructional material may generate more income for you if you self-publish it. Whether it does so depends, of course, on how must it costs you to produce and market it and the number of copies you sell. A number of academic authors who could easily have gotten publishing contracts for their textbooks or instructional materials chose to self-publish because doing so could generate more income. Directing Marketing and Promotion Textbooks and instructional materials that a publisher regards as not having the potential to become best sellers are rarely marketed adequately. This means that if you want your book or material to reach as large a segment of its intended audience as possible, you will have to assume an active role in marketing it. However, the publisher's agents responsible for marketing your book or material may not welcome your involvement. Or they may be unable to do what is necessary to market your textbook or instructional material adequately, because the budget available for doing so is inadequate. In fact, the budget may be close to nothing. If you self-publish a textbook or instructional material, you will have full control over marketing and promoting it. Marketing and promotion involve significant cost in time and money, however. Some possible strategies for these purposes are described in Chapter 11. Inviting Family Participation Your involvement in self-publishing may have the potential to benefit one or more members of your family in a number of ways, such as the following. * Providing spending money for one or more of your high school-age children. Their pay would depend on their responsibilities. As their responsibilities increased, their salary would be expected to also. * Bringing your relationship with a partner or spouse of one of your children closer to you by working with them on a book project. * Interesting one or more of your relatives in textbook publishing as a career. There may well be other indirect benefits from family participation. Having Pleasure! Most people who have self-published more than one book or material continued doing so because they enjoy it. As one advocate-Judith Applebaum (1988, p. 151)-stated: In these push-button times, the pleasures of physical achievement are reserved mainly for children, but self-publishers, along with a handful of other adults who work with their hands building things they love, are privileged to share the I-made-it-myself elation. * * * * * * * * NOTE: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor Mailing List by addressing an e-mail message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Do NOT put anything in the SUBJECT line but in the body of the message type: subscribe tomorrows-professor * * * * * * * * To UNSUBSCRIBE to the Tomorrows-Professor send the following e-mail message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> unsubscribe tomorrows-professor -- -++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**==--++**== This message was posted through the Stanford campus mailing list server. If you wish to unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message body of "unsubscribe tomorrows-professor" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ligia Parra-Esteban. Directora Fundación Voc de Investigación de la Comunicación Entre Científicos. http://mox.uniandes.edu.co/voc Luis H. Blanco. Secretario de la Junta Directiva. Laboratorio de Investigaciones Básicas. Ciudad Universitaria. Unidad Camilo Torres. Bogotá. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------. |
