On 28 June, 22:21, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 1:41 PM, Bill Hart <goodwillh...@googlemail.com> > wrote: > > I don't think it is a click-through. > > > I think this publisher is for real and actually does quite a good job. > > > Apart from the fact that the cover illustrations have nothing at all > > to do with the content, their books seem well-written. They publish a > > lot of titles and they offer them much cheaper if you buy them as E- > > books. They ship lots of places if you want a physical copy. They also > > offer a single chapter from each book for evaluation before you > > purchase. > > > They also do seem to add value to the publication after the author is > > done with it. > > > It is definitely publication on a budget, but their prices seem to > > reflect that, and Sage does seem to be something they would definitely > > want to publish a book on. If I was an expert Sage user, had more > > time, etc, etc. I'd definitely take this seriously. > > I definitely would not. In my opinion, the are only two reasonable > options for publishing Sage-related books: > > 1. Use an open license and self publish through, e.g., Lulu. The > Sage community can do the hard editing work better than most > publishers. (Here's I'm talking mainly about Minh Nguyen.) I think > you'll earn as much money as you would get from Packt, but you get > 100% of the profits instead of 18%, so end buyers pay far less (and > get more -- due to the open license). > > 2. Publish with a very high quality reputable publisher, e.g., > Springer, O'Reilly, AMS, Cambridge, Oxford. They understand the math > world and can advertise. And they also are starting to understand > "freeness".... Case in point: http://wstein.org/ent/
Come on William, how can you possibly hold Springer up as the model of "openness". Where is the tex file? Where is the OSI license text? Last time I published a paper with Springer, they sent me 50 free electronic copies of my own damned paper with DRM on them and asked if I wanted to buy 50 more electronic copies! Every time I publish an article in a Springer Journal I have to sign a damned copyright assignment form *and physically fax it to them*. This is bloody inconvenient. I'm sure Springer is changing, and I am sure their book publishing division is completely different to their journal publication section. But really.... The whole point of Packt's model is they pay the author a royalty advance up-front, regardless of the success of the book, then make a donation to the Open Source project involved (I'm sure it's pretty small). That possibly gives an author a chance to actually sit down and write a book that they otherwise wouldn't write. They also add value to the book by offering publisher expertise throughout the process, unlikely to be present amongst a bunch of computer scientists. They *specialise* in Open Source topics, and many very decent Open Source projects have chosen to publish with them. And Lulu? And Packt are reputable. They get reviews on Slashdot, just the same as O'Reilly. Bill. P.S: I don't give a toss whether anyone publishes a Sage book through Packt or not. This isn't about "religion", though I admit, I don't "get" Open Source publishing completely. Were we building a community of publishers, I might, because then it would make sense to say that we felt we had the expertise to do it better than professional companies charging exorbitant fees to do the same thing, and keeping information proprietary. > > -- William > > > > > > > > > Bill. > > > On 28 June, 21:33, "Justin C. Walker" <jus...@mac.com> wrote: > >> On 28 Jun, 2010, at 1:20 PM, Bill Hart wrote: > > >> > As with all such things, beware you are dealing with the real people > >> > and not some phoney. I see the links in the form letter don't direct > >> > to the websites they say they do, but instead go via google. Not sure > >> > what's up with that.... > > >> Maybe it's a form of "click-through" that somehow makes money for someone. > >> It's the new economy, all over again. > > >> Justin > > >> -- > >> Justin C. Walker, Curmudgeon at Large > >> Director > >> Institute for the Enhancement of the Director's Income > >> ----------- > >> Nobody knows the trouble I've been > >> ----------- > > > -- > > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > > For more options, visit this group > > athttp://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > > URL:http://www.sagemath.org > > -- > William Stein > Professor of Mathematics > University of Washingtonhttp://wstein.org -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
