Thank you for the kind words, William. :-)
> One request: can you syntax highlight the big blocks of input code?
Somehow we didn't think of that. If you have handy, ready-to-plug-in tex
code, I could try doing that very soon. Otherwise I'm absolutely swamped
this semester, so it ain't gonna happen by hand, or not soon anyway. [Note:
sometimes I'll write first-person singular, as I did here, because I'm
writing, but essentially I speak for all three authors.]
> Is this book the sort of thing that could legally also get converted
> to worksheets and made available inside SMC (or on a static website
> with sage cell server)? Rob Beezer just got a grant related to doing
more of that sort of thing. It could also help immensely in expanding
> the range of people who can easily use Sage.
>
I'm going to need help with "legally," but:
(a) The tentative license is CC-BY-NC-SA, unless someone convinces us
that's a bad idea.
(b) I really like what I've seen of Rob's work (e.g., on the Judson book).
I would be happy for this conversion to be made, and would even do it
myself if I had the time & energy, which frankly wouldn't happen before
next summer. We used Lyx to type it, so in theory there's even a way to
tell Lyx to do this, though it would require the writing of a converter.
(c) As regards my employer's attitude:
(c1) The administration expresses support for, and interest in, open
textbooks. They encourage faculty both to use and to produce them.
(c2) I met university counsel, who informed that we were free to proceed as
we wish, even charge royalties, notwithstanding the summer stipends we
received to write the text. None of this was committed to paper, so I
suppose it could change, and we will have a followup meeting. For reasons I
won't go into in a public email, I believe that is a permanent position.
(I'd be happy to explain in private.)
(d) If you read the preface, then you know what our intent regarding
hypothetical proceeds: help math students at our institution, and help the
development of Sage. *My* main concern with copyright in this case is that
a book whose production was subsidized by a university summer grant, hence
ultimately funded by Mississippi's taxpayers, benefit Mississippi's
taxpayers rather than someone who at most added a small value to the text.
(If you didn't read the preface, we address that in the section "Any
last words?" By the by, let me know if "The SAGE Foundation" is the best
target there.)
> Is your main goal with a traditional publisher really **PEER REVIEW**?
Yes. That's a long-term consideration, though, so there's plenty of time to
suggest a better avenue. Given the open text movement, I would not be
surprised if something exists. Additional considerations I had:
- Despite the progress of technology, many students prefer a paper copy
of a text, and will print large sections of an electronic text & have it
bound. So I'd like that to be available.
- People consider a text more serious if it's from a "respectable"
publisher. While my employer currently favors open texts, I can remember a
time when they didn't seem to care which journal you published in, as long
as it was published. New policies are now in place to prevent the use of
vanity journals, and I imagine a similar scenario with open texts in the
not-too-distant future.
- If there are economies of scale to be had, I suspect a traditional
publisher would achieve them much more easily than an on-demand publisher.
This would be our first text, and while I am absolutely ignorant of
royalties, aside from the fact that James Stewart built a multimillion
dollar house using the proceeds from $150 calculus textbooks (give or take
a few tens) and another author has told me he's pretty sure his publisher
hid royalties from him, I hope you won't be too offended that I expected
the potential audience for this Sage text to approach a somewhat small
epsilon multiple of that audience. Feel free to disabuse me of these
notions! :-)
> Because what happens is they will take 82% of all revenue, then they
> will get somebody like me (or someone else likely reading this) to
> actually do 100% of the peer review **for free**.
Actually, 82% is lower than I expected (I've been told I have a rather dim
view of human nature) but what really surprised me is that I was
compensated to peer review one chapter from a kth edition of a linear
algebra text (positive review), and one new linear algebra text (fairly
negative review). The compensation wasn't much, but it was a non-trivial
amount to me, and involved an actual, honest-to-goodness paper check for
one. (The other was a tidy sum in books.) So I'm genuinely shocked to read
your experience.
Under the current arrangement, the cost of a paperback edition is
significantly higher than I had hoped, though significantly less than the
average non-Springer math textbook. This supposedly includes color output,
which we really needed.
> The only thing the traditional publisher
> actually does that has value is marketing (usually not much) and
> copyediting -- usually not very well, and even then, you could pay
> somebody to do it for not so much.
This I understood, especially the marketing, but also the negative
evaluation of copy editing. Given the nature of our course & thus of our
book, I wasn't sure of the potential market.
> All I'm saying is there might be
> a better route to peer review, in which you don't have to give up so
> much, and the value is greater. Who knows, your book -- made
> **extremely available and accessible ** -- might be just what is
> needed for Sage to start growing in usage again (which it hasn't done
> for years).
>
I am very open to "a better route to peer review," especially if the
outcome implies an improved text for our students. I am also happy to help
Sage grow if I can. So I am quite open to suggestions. I'll continue to
reply here, but perhaps this is better to pursue in private email?
john perry
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