Ed, I just ordered your 8th edition from Pearson <https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/program/ANGEL-Pearson-e-Text-Interactive-Computer-Graphics-Access-Card-8th-Edition/PGM2160099.html?tab=order> as I was blown away by the awesomeness of the new cover. :-)
The confirmation email tells me a *physical* access card is being shipped for my digital order. First time I've seen this - are physical access cards for digital products common for textbooks these days? I just thought it was lazy programming in the shopping cart requiring a physical address for a digital product. I have an urgent need to use your book this weekend and can not wait for delivery. I will be calling the author directly while I await arrival :-) It actually has to do with implementing the cover and getting the decentralized capture and rendering to realtime which hinges on realtime depth-image based rendering using spherical light fields while skipping any 3D cartesian intermediate shenanigans. Thank you for your help so far! -S PS, I also checked out Amazon and they appear to be the same with the physical card. PPS: 8th edition isn't the default choice edition on Amazon or Pearson when searching. On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 3:22 PM Edward Angel <an...@cs.unm.edu> wrote: > I’ve been a book author since 1972 and a textbook author since 1989. My > computer graphics textbook has been the most popular book in the area for > 20 years and just came out in its eighth edition with various editions > being available in Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian. Sadly, the book > business has changed over that time; changed in way that is bad for almost > everyone, especially authors. I think you’re faced with a lot of bad > choices. I hope some of the following will prove helpful. And if not > helpful, at least interesting. > > Before I forget, you might enjoy reading of my adventures writing the > first edition of my present textbook while on sabbatical in Venezuela, > Ecuador, Hong Kong and Nepal. There’s a pointer to it on my home page > www.cs.unm.edu/~angel > > When I had to pick a publisher, I knew the editors and local book reps at > Academic Press, Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall and Benjamin/Cummings. They > dominated the CS field and did so largely because they had editors who knew > the field, excellent book reps who knew the needs of the faculty and > students, a willingness to invest in a book, and in-house production. None > of these exist anymore and, as Tom pointed out, you're largely on your own. > It’s unfortunate if you care about how many copies get sold and your > royalties. I have many friends who self-published in the past. It’s a lot > of work either way but I prefer to put my effort into content and not > type-setting or marketing. None of my self-published friends have ever sold > many books. > > I had three excellent editors over 20 years. When I did my first edition, > my editor hired a development editor at great expense to improve the > quality of my writing. She worked with the CS faculty and grad students at > Caltech and Stanford. It made a huge difference. Now almost none of these > jobs exist within the publishers. All production is contracted out to the > low bidders (art, typesetting, copy editing, etc) most of whom are in > India. I no longer have an editor. There is one person working for the > publusher with whom I communicate with to try to get things done correctly > with the contractors. This last edition has been a long painful experience. > > So what happened? Books were always expensive for students, especially > when sold through college bookstores. Then used book sellers appeared and > Asian students started importing low cost Asian versions of the standard > textbooks. Under US copyright laws, both are legal. The publishers > responded by upping prices which reduced sales even more. > > And then came electronic media. At first, my book, like most others, was > still print-only. But the publisher sent perfect unwatermarked pdfs to all > the schools what adopted the book for use by students with special needs. > Wasn’t long before those pdfs made it to the Web. Then they had a > electronic version and a kindle version that students could rent for a > semester or year. The publisher, the largest in the business, was clueless > about web security and had no idea that Kindles are not secure. Very > quickly, the book appeared (with most of the other cs texts and various > best sellers) on a Russian website as a “public service.” End of paid sales. > > The new edition is only available in electronic form and the publisher > claims it is only available on a secure site. I doubt anyone on this list > believes that. > > Although I never in the past had issues with the publisher having the > copyright, which was pretty standard, I wish I had it now. Since there is > no hope of making significant royalties now (we used), my coauthor and I > would like to put the book out for free on our websites rather than having > it appear on various illegal Russian sites known to most students. > > Personally, I no longer care about royalties but the long term issue I > worry about is why would any young person write a textbook. It’s a huge > amount of work and usually not something that in the academic world is > valued as highly as research papers and grant funding. > > Ed > _______________________ > > Ed Angel > > Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory > (ARTS Lab) > Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico > > 1017 Sierra Pinon > Santa Fe, NM 87501 > 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu > 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel >
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