Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Online Communities
Dennis. (01)
You are right. Printing books on demand comes to about $15 (U.S.) a
piece. I bought a copy of a friend's book ("A History of Media," by W.
Lambert Gardiner) for about Cnd $25 (=U.S. $16). Color on the cover; B&W
illustrations inside; 225 pages. Done by Trafford (www.trafford.com). My
guesstimate is that tis compares to roughly $35 -40 Cnd. had it been
published the conventional way. The savings lie in cutting out the
marketing and storage costs. Disadvantages (so far!): books not
advertised means little exposure to potential buyers; takes about a week
from order to delivery. Advantages: low cost, higher percentage to
author. The combination with on-Web publishing looks to be a winning one. (02)
The publisher has the author's CD and workd from there. Making
corrections is as-you-go is, therefore, fairly easy. (03)
A major issue I have with publishers that they produce their books for
"sales appeal" and, as we have seen from some comments by people on this
forum, readily override author's intentions. I realize when I made
critical comments about the Lambert-Osborne Java textbook, that the
authors had put in a lot of work, but question is, did the editors help
the authors doing a better job of bringing out their intentions or did
they just added enough of the text to appeal to casual browsers, etc.? (04)
Somehow, here as well as in other areas of human endeavor, more emphasis
ought be on meeting desires, less on creating desires. (05)
Henry (06)
Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: (07)
>I think this is very exciting.
>
>I would like to think we are seeing a trend.
>
>It is reported that Brewster Kahle's "Bookmobile" can make a bound book for
>about $1 in materials. I don't know how accurate that is. But I bet
>print-on-demand kiosks, using cheaply-licensed or open-publication or
>public-domain works that have been made into digital works could produce
>books for under $15 apiece, retail, depending on size. This would provide
>an intermediate case before publishing, say, a full-up paperback
>distribution provided through standard book distribution channels.
>
>-- Dennis
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
>[mailto:owner-ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org]On Behalf Of Henry K van Eyken
>Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 15:48
>To: ba-unrev-talk@bootstrap.org
>Subject: Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Online Communities
>
>[ ... ]
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>"But then I started hearing 'OK, fine, it's nice you've put up an
>electronic version, but I want a printed and bound copy from a real
>publisher.' I tried very hard to make it easy for everyone to print it
>out in a nice looking format but that didn't stem the demand for the
>published book. Most people don't want to read the entire book on
>screen, and hauling around a sheaf of papers, no matter how nicely
>printed, didn't appeal to them either. (Plus, I think it's not so cheap
>in terms of laser printer toner.) It seems that the computer revolution
>won't put publishers out of business after all. However, one student
>suggested this may become a model for future publishing: books will be
>published on the Web first, and only if sufficient interest warrants it
>will the book be put on paper. Currently, the great majority of all
>books are financial failures, and perhaps this new approach could make
>the publishing industry more profitable."
>
>Thomson Course Technology, are you listening? [/vE/]
>
>[ ... ]
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> (08)