[dansitu]

Armchair anarchists aside, it's galling to see the work my co-authors, editors, designers, illustrators, translators, and reviewers poured months of our lives into available for free on this site.

Money is rarely an incentive for writing a textbook, but it's certainly important for the brilliant and under-appreciated people who work in publishing, maintaining the fragile existence of our greatest technology: the book.

[wing-_-nuts]

>it's galling to see the work my co-authors, editors, designers, illustrators and translators poured months of our lives into available for free on this site.

I would be more empathetic if publishers gave the same lending rights to ebooks as they give to physical ones. As it is, the publishers basically extort libraries to the point where offering ebooks drains coffers way more than physical ones.

Given that, I don't feel too much guilt 'borrowing' from alternate sources.

[toast0]

> I would be more empathetic if publishers gave the same lending rights to ebooks as they give to physical ones. As it is, the publishers basically extort libraries to the point where offering ebooks drains coffers way more than physical ones.

Publishers give you no lending rights on physical books; legislation and common law give you rights to lend that stem from the first-sale doctrine where I live. Push your legislators (or courts) to establish first-sale doctrine over digital content and there you go.

[wing-_-nuts]

Our legislators don't seem very interested in consumer rights and protections anymore, so I'm not terribly interested in their copyright laws.

[wubrr]

> it's galling to see the work my co-authors, editors, designers, illustrators, translators, and reviewers poured months of our lives into available for free on this site.

Why? You may think your work is super unique/original/awesome, but the reality is 99% of the content of 99% of books is not unique or original, and those works wouldn't exist without massively relying on and borrowing from other works.

> it's certainly important for the brilliant and under-appreciated people who work in publishing, maintaining the fragile existence of our greatest technology: the book.

There are better ways of supporting work you find important than the parasitic publishing industry and copyright.

> maintaining the fragile existence of our greatest technology: the book.

Books existed long before publishers and copyright, and seem to have survived quite well.

[dansitu]

> Books existed long before publishers and copyright, and seem to have survived quite well.

Who do you think was feeding the monks?

[wubrr]

I don't really care, but many different people, for many different reasons.

You may think this specific example, which you seem to think resembles the current publishing industry, negates my overall point, but... not even close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_books#Book_culture

> The authors of antiquity had no rights concerning their published works; there were neither authors' nor publishing rights. Anyone could have a text recopied, and even alter its contents. Scribes earned money and authors earned mostly glory unless a patron provided cash; a book made its author famous. This followed the traditional concept of the culture: an author stuck to several models, which he imitated and attempted to improve. The status of the author was not regarded as absolutely personal.

[daedrdev]

> Books existed long before publishers and copyright, and seem to have survived quite well.

We are living in the most productive time ever for the book industry, I think comparing the current industry to the past when we produce several orders of magnitude more works that many people highly value is nonsensical.

[wubrr]

That point was specifically in response to the suggestion that we need publishers and copyright for books to exist - which is obviously false. Not sure how the size of the current industry relates to that point.

[daedrdev]

I'm saying that even though books would exist without copyright and publishers, it allows for several times more books to exist by providing an incentive. Authors could give their books for free if they really felt that it was important for their book to be free.

[wubrr]

> I'm saying that even though books would exist without copyright and publishers, it allows for several times more books to exist by providing an incentive.

Having the maximum number of books possible is not really something I would consider a success metric. Or do you think the endless stream of AI-generated books happening right now is a good thing? Also, publishers and copyright are not the only way to monetize your work.

> Authors could give their books for free if they really felt that it was important for their book to be free.

Can they? Or does the publisher control that right? That being said, some of the best technical books/works I've read were free.

[daedrdev]

> Having the maximum number of books possible is not really something I would consider a success metric. Or do you think the endless stream of AI-generated books happening right now is a good thing? Also, publishers and copyright are not the only way to monetize your work.

Obviously I think that the combination of value and quantity of books today is much higher in the past, you don't need to nitpick my phrasing. Additionally, the book industry has been in its new peak of written work since before AI became good in 2020.

> Can they? Or does the publisher control that right? That being said, some of the best technical books/works I've read were free.

Its 2024. An author doesn't need a publisher outside of academia if they want to publish a book for free. They might not have an editor or translator, but those things cost money. But most authors like money and since most books loose publishers money its not like the author is loosing out.

> That being said, some of the best technical books/works I've read were free.

I'm glad you liked them. The best fiction works I read I paid for, and trust me I've read a lot of free fiction works.

[account42]

> I'm saying that even though books would exist without copyright and publishers, it allows for several times more books to exist by providing an incentive.

Does it though? The current deluge of books is mainly due to the easy of creating them and getting them to readers. That is, thank computers not copyright.

[troyvit]

> You may think your work is super unique/original/awesome, but the reality is 99% of the content of 99% of books is not unique or original, and those works wouldn't exist without massively relying on and borrowing from other works.

Cool so you won't miss it when libgen is gone then? I mean if there's nothing unique or original there then what's to miss right?

> Books existed long before publishers and copyright, and seem to have survived quite well.

I don't know how else to measure the health of books other than measuring the health of publishing, and it doesn't seem like it's doing so great:

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/p...

I'm not saying the publishing industry is sane or just, but how does belittling the work of the authors help anything?

[wubrr]

> Cool so you won't miss it when libgen is gone then?

I personally won't, because I've never used it. I am 100% against it being shut down though.

> I mean if there's nothing unique or original there then what's to miss right?

Read my comment again and find the spot where I said 'nothing'.

> I don't know how else to measure the health of books other than measuring the health of publishing

You can start by defining what 'health of books' even means, but your conclusion here seems seriously perverse.

> how does belittling the work of the authors help anything?

What is belittling about acknowledging the fact that current works (especially technical/non-fiction) heavily draw from previous works? The last few technical books I read literally had zero original/unique information - they were just re-organization/re-phrasing/compilation of other works. That's not a bad thing - I think it's great, and the books are great, but is that justification for restricting access to this information - when it is literally 100% based on other works?

[psadauskas]

If there was a way I could give the authors a few dollars for their work, I totally would. Instead in the system we have, I have to give a publisher $100 so they can give the author $0.50. The publisher uses the money to make rich people richer, and scaring people by suing for violating laws that they themselves wrote.

Whenever possible, I try to but stuff from the authors & creators directly. I haven't been in the market for textbooks in a long time, but even 20 years ago it was a ripoff, and it seems to have only gotten worse.

[dansitu]

I'm an author, and the compensation you're quoting is wildly low.

Beyond that: I've co-written two reasonably successful technical books. The amount of non-writing work that went into them is staggering: editing, reviewing, laying them out, creating illustrations, translating them into different languages, making them available for sale across the world, etc. It requires an unbelievable amount of skill, talent, and hard work.

The raw draft we hand in looks embarrassing beside the finished product.

[psadauskas]

I certainly appreciate your efforts, and the efforts of everyone involved. I know a few authors and copy editors, and it seems like an incredible amount of work to deliver the finished product.

I suppose my snark was more in reference to the textbook market, which seems to be the primary focus of Libgen. Academic textbooks seem primarily to be a way to extract some student loan money into publishers' pockets, with plenty of obvious typos, problems that can't be completed, and new editions every year that simply change the order of chapters without fixing any of those issues.

When I was a student, in several of my technical classes, after every test we'd spend a class correcting the answers provided by the textbook that disagreed with more authoritative sources. Spending $100 for a book that was only half right when I could have bought a real technical book for $40 has made me cynical about the whole industry.

[_emacsomancer_]

I've written numerous technical articles and had to publish them in particular journals for academic promotion/retention reasons, and almost universally the (paid) editors (not the working for free other academic reviewers) added negative value: they introduced errors and I had to spend hours of unnecessary time trying to catch these newly introduced errors, and even then tonnes remained. I distribute the preprints (that paid editors didn't get their hands on) because they're much less error- and typo-ridden then the official published versions.

Anyway, I've got a new list of publishers I'll never publish with, nor use anything they publish as required reading for a class I teach.

[zerr]

Ebook pricing is broken. Sell it for $0.99 and you'll get buyers. You can't sell ebooks when it costs only 5-10% less than a dead-tree hardcover variant. People don't like being ripped off.

[ndiddy]

Books are far cheaper to print than most people realize. If you see a publisher charging 5-10% less for an ebook than a physical book, it's because they're pricing the ebook at whatever the physical book's price is, minus the printing costs.

[folmar]

Before ebooks came abundant the publishers said some 10% of book price is their money, another 10-15% is for author and editors, and the rest is eaten up by print and distribution+shop. I guess the distribution through publishers' site can be done at 20% of sales price.

[perpetualpatzer]

The major costs you're missing are marketing and "plate" (up front cost to produce the content). Those make up most of the total costs. For textbooks, the decision makers are professors (so door-to-door sales to get their attention), and the market is pretty small, especially for upper level content (so few units to amortize fixed costs over). Print, paper, and binding are cheap, say ~$10-12 average for a textbook. Typically, distribution channel takes a 20-25%, depending on channel partner, and many colleges mandate that sales go through the school bookstore because they get a cut, so publisher's website isn't necessarily a viable option (without a lot of student marketing). Author royalties run ~13-15% of revenue, and editors hit plate expense (they're publisher employees, so not a variable cost like authors). Textbook publisher Ebitda margins wind up running 20-25%, but most publisher's pay a lot of interest expense, partly because the major costs are up front, and partly because there's been a lot of PE ownership. Net margins can be tight as anyone else's.

Source: worked for a plaintiff publisher in this case. Think Pearson, Cengage, and MHE all publish financials also.

[dansitu]

There's a fairly small pool of readers for a niche technical book. Selling it for $0.99 won't meaningfully increase the number of buyers, and it won't recover enough revenue to meet the cost of production.

[zerr]

AFAIK such books are not directly profitable anyway. It's about getting recognized and subsequent gigs/clients/employment opportunities for authors.

[kevin_thibedeau]

That's why you see pulp paperbacks selling for $20+ so that the e-book looks like a steal at $15.

[adhamsalama]

I've seen ebooks being sold for more money than the printed version.

[squarefoot]

Sell them at reasonable prices and people will buy them. Ever seen someone photocopying an entire newspaper? Guess what would happen if newspapers prices suddenly were inflated to like 50 bucks.

[WFHRenaissance]

The reality is that without the existence of publishers the price of almost all texts would drift toward a minimum far below the worthwhileness of any author.

So maybe, like art, texts will become sheer passion projects - even technical texts. Otherwise, I'm sure LLMs will be able to replace their usefulness soon.

[Der_Einzige]

The fact that artists/writers pearl clutch over their already non lucrative jobs while software folks are gleeful to sell their own earning potential out from under themselves shows you that artists/writers are wannabe Bolshevik’s and that software folks are the only honest “egalitarians” out there.

[dml2135]

lmao. As a painter-turned-software engineer, this rings true.

[skeaker]

Blame your publisher.