
Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy - samclemens
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/sep/04/academics-are-being-hoodwinked-into-writing-books-nobody-can-buy
======
patio11
Academics spend years writing books nobody will buy. That's practically the
definition of academic writing. They go into incredible amount of depths for a
very, very niche audience: other academics interested in, e.g., the experience
of women in Japanese detective novels of the 19th century. (n.b. Actually a
book, assuming I am remembering all the details correctly. An advisor spent
years on it.)

This is _exactly_ the result the market should hope for: a profitable method
which gets academics to write down very-incredibly-niche ideas and then put
copies of them exactly where someone would expect to find very-incredibly-
niche ideas. The alternative to these $150 books is not $7.50 books. It is "no
book." They do not meaningfully trade off with equally-in-depth blog posts,
because academics are not scored on, and hence do not as a matter of practice
actually sit down and write, book-length blog posts.

~~~
peterarmstrong
The alternative is _absolutely_ not "no book". Academic books can do
__extremely __well as ebooks.

I'm cofounder of Leanpub, and some of our bestselling books
([https://leanpub.com/bookstore/earnings_in_last_7_days/all/al...](https://leanpub.com/bookstore/earnings_in_last_7_days/all/all))
are academic books about data science written by professors. This includes our
#1 book this week
([https://leanpub.com/artofdatascience](https://leanpub.com/artofdatascience)).

These books have free minimum prices, $15 or so suggested prices, and do very
well for their authors -- both by royalties earned and by number of copies
sold.

The key point here is that if you're typically earning $10 or more in
royalties (yes, royalties) per paid book sale, then a few thousand book sales
can add up to being meaningful, fast. And yes, this can even happen with
academic books that have a free minimum price...

~~~
rayiner
Data science is not a niche academic field by any means. It's a high-growth
employment sector with probably tens of thousands of practitioners interested.

~~~
peterarmstrong
Fair point!

------
librvf
_These may sound like stories of concern to academics alone. But the problem
is this: much of the time that goes into writing these books is made possible
through taxpayers’ money. And who buys these books? Well, university libraries
– and they, too, are paid for by taxpayers. Meanwhile, the books are not
available for taxpayers to read – unless they have a university library card.

In the US, taxpayers are said to be spending $139bn a year on research, and in
the UK, £4.7bn. Too much of that money is disappearing into big pockets._

What is this garbage? Why not let an interesting article about a specific
problem (academic publishing scams) stand on its own? Why pour on
sensationalized, over-simplified, misleading "context?"

According to to study where those numbers came from, the $139bn the federal
government spends on "research" is a part of a larger pool of "funding for
research" that includes non-government sources, which is like $450bn.
Universities (not just the libraries) are getting about $60bn _from the big
pool_.

In other words: the study, at least the results referenced by The Guardian
article, does not say ANYTHING about the flow of money from taxpayer wallets
to university libraries. Based on the evidence presented, the fraction of
university library funding from taxpayer dollars could be anywhere from 0% to
100%. This is blatant dishonesty from The Guardian.

[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf14307](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf14307)

Oh and one more thing: The "good" part of the article is written by an
anonymous source with no verifiable facts (no publisher names, no book names).
I have no real reason to dispute its authenticity, the idea certainly seems
plausible, but I can not verify any of the claims being made without basically
starting my own study from scratch.

~~~
jordanpg
Wow -- apparently The Guardian actually has a recurring section called
"Academics Anonymous"??? That seems like an interesting story in its own
right.

Well done pointing this out. This supposed academic, is doing palpable damage
to his/her own industry.

This is the kind of article we can expect to be quoted by the right-wing
crazies who want to shut down all universities.

~~~
notahacker
As a commenter beneath the article pointed out, it also rather clashes the
Guardian's own one day seminars on "How to Write an Academic Paper and Get It
Published", a snip at £249 per person...

------
hellofunk
This article could easily be expanded to include software developers as well
as academics. I've seen several excellent developers with strong reputations
contributing to the open source community get "hoodwinked" into rushing out
shallow books for companies like Apress. I've seen other developers also get
sucked into the game, only to see less income from the work in one year as
you'd need to buy a modest used car -- after months of at least half-time
effort. The market and problem for these books is a bit different than the
market described in this article, but the symptoms on the writers is often the
same.

~~~
maaaats
Alot of publishers also do a shotgun approach to find developers to write a
book for them. I've been contacted several times to act as reviewer or even
write the book myself about a framework named Libgdx. All because I have a
Github repo with some example code for a single feature, that's somewhat
popular.

The repo is many years old, and I no longer write mobile games. So I'm not a
good match as an author for such a book. Still, if I'd say yes, they would've
published a shitty book. And I can't say I didn't think about it, vanity..

~~~
leaveyou
To me this is a sign that the end of traditional publishing is very near. They
milk the last drops from a dying field ?

~~~
hellofunk
I'm not sure what you mean by "traditional publishing" but in many cases the
books that are being written are primarily sold as ebooks, and part of the
larger scam is that consumers can actually buy these books months before they
are written with the promise of constant updates. I bought an Apress ebook
once that was barely started when I purchased it, but that was not clear at
the time. The actual finished book was nearly one year later.

But if by "traditional publishing" you include electronic publishing, then I'd
agree, something is probably going to change soon. It's clear that you can get
much more education in today's world in ways other than books.

~~~
gregjwild
Manning Publications editor here.

Truth be told, we go to early access largely because we think it helps us make
sure the book is delivering the goods, collect feedback, and hopefully improve
the book as a result. We try to make it very clear how much of the book has
been written - indicating what chapters have been written, and make it very
clear that the book is unfinished.

------
DrNuke
Broadly speaking, cheap e-books from non-stellar academics are an incredible
amount of data leaked for free: top peer-reviewed journals are not cheap at
all and relevant conferences proceedings are often run on a pay-for-view
scheme. The non-stellar academic from Windy Hill University, Nowhere, will
sell a good summary of his/her field and an up to date literature review for
less than $20. Bargain.

~~~
1971genocide
I can tell you are not a millennial student or else you wont have that view.

We are made to buy extremely expensive books and waste time reading crap books
all the time.

The best books in my field were written randomly over the last 300 years.

I think ALL information should be free in the digital age. its the maximum
rate of efficiency.

There are 6 billion people in the world without a proper high class uni
education like myself.

How is it that we are okay supplying free weapons to poor people but go to
great deal to restrict the supply of information ?

~~~
dalke
"we are made to buy extremely expensive books"

One of the thing about young people is they rarely have a sense of history.
The relevant question is, how does that compare to, say, a Gen X student? We
have plenty of archival evidence for that. One such is this newspaper article
from 1988, titled "Students pay a high price for college textbooks" at
[https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19881110&id=...](https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19881110&id=qvpNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fIsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7074,1871947&hl=en)
. It starts off "The price of textbooks will make you cry."

The end of the first column continues "For the last 50 to 60 years students
said exactly the same thing about book prices." Yes, Baby Boomers made the
same complaint you just did.

The larger context is that starting in the 1980s cultural views shifted so
that college should be seen as prerequisite job training, and not as a way to
expand the mind, understand the world, and better oneself. Thus, colleges
could justify price hikes by saying it would lead to a better jobs in the
future, which could pay off the increased debt. Where Boomers could work for
the summer to pay off a year of school, modern students must pay back loans
for the next decade.

But that has relatively little to do with the price of textbooks. Even if the
textbooks were free, it would only mean the colleges would hike the prices
elsewhere to maximize profit extraction.

------
nebulous1
Why wouldn't the answer be to have the libraries not buy books from
unscrupulous publishers?

------
georgeek
One quality specialized publisher is Now Publishers :
[http://www.nowpublishers.com/](http://www.nowpublishers.com/) Quality is
managed by having leading academics have a say in the editorial decisions.

Their conditions are somehow better than more established ones. Authors still
hold the copyright over the material, and according to the librarians at my
institution, their campus and course packs are much cheaper to other
publishers.

------
Zigurd
This is why, if you want to be an author publishing through the more or less
conventional publishing industry, you need a first-rate agent, and a knowledge
of who is a first-rate publisher.

There's a big difference between a global publisher placing your book in their
professional publishing imprints versus an obscure publisher leaching a bit of
money out of libraries. The first-rate publisher will also get your expensive
book into their subscription programs that they market to corporate
subscribers, for example.

If you have a good agent, they will steer you toward the goals you are
pursuing, if you communicate those goals clearly. That's where some knowledge
of which publishers have the best and/or most widely read books in your field
is important.

If you want to get your book into the more-widely sold trade paperback format,
you need to tune your proposal to that goal. Most publishers require you to do
some competitive analysis in your proposal. That's going to be important
guidance for where your book ends up.

------
Goladus
Has The Guardian Been Bought By The Onion?

[http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/09/05/the-guardian-been-b...](http://the-
digital-reader.com/2015/09/05/the-guardian-been-bought-by-the-onion-only-no-
one-noticed/)

------
m-i-l
Reminds me of Business Secrets of the Pharaohs [0]. But does anyone actually
enter in to this process without understanding what it is? Looks like is is a
widely known practice [1].

[0] [http://www.gq-
magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2012-12/...](http://www.gq-
magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2012-12/05/peep-show-mark-corrigan-
business-secrets-of-the-pharaohs)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_open_access_publishing)

~~~
caminante
Editor: Nothing's happening and you guys are behind on ad impressions. Anyone
have content ideas?

"Freelance" Journalist: Oh! I could do a creative writing prompt as an
"Anonymous Academic," sexing up the ordinary academic publishing world with an
expose. Bitter college kids will eat that up on social media.

Editor: Guess that works. Run it!

------
madaxe_again
And students are being hoodwinked into buying them. The books also often
include minutiae which change from edition to edition, so you have to get the
nth edition in order to take your class - because in physics, for instance,
there are Q&A in the books which differ between editions.

The main book we had to get was written by two of the lecturers, and was £300.
It was so half-assedly bound that you had to cut the pages open.

~~~
harry8
name the book, author and publisher. If what you say is true they don't
deserve protection.

~~~
Thriptic
It sounds like what they are referring to is a course reader published by
their own university.

------
raverbashing
And of course the question is, how much would the academic make with those
sales? (I'm guessing not much)

~~~
PeterisP
Possibly a negative amount - some of these publishers do, in essence, a
classic "who's who"/vanity publishing scam where the profit comes from the
author paying for a bunch of expensive copies, and they usually won't even be
sold to anyone else.

------
jordanpg
I wonder how much of this is simply a function of the massive overpopulation
of graduate programs and the growing need to fill out CVs with publications? I
know that this has been happening for years in the form of obscure journals
that no one reads or cares about.

------
n0us
One of the best emails I've received in a while was from the UVA alumni
association letting me know that I would retain library access, including
access to JSTOR, because there is no way I could afford to outright purchase
everything I want to read.

------
copsarebastards
They aren't being hoodwinked, they're just not writing the books to be bought.
Nobody goes into academia hoping to write the next bestseller.

------
tarekkurdy
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M68wcB6L0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M68wcB6L0s)

------
VIRGIE11111
Fantastic writing ! I Appreciate the info , Does anyone know if I could get
ahold of a sample 1999 ASI Lite - CF form to edit ?

~~~
Sherice
Hey Virgie11111, I found a blank fillable 1999 ASI Lite - CF form here:
[http://pdf.ac/ahd5Bk](http://pdf.ac/ahd5Bk)

------
anta40
£80 is definitely not cheap. I'm curious what factors make those textbooks so
pricey.

~~~
patio11
They're like software: really cheap at the margin to make the 100,000th copy,
really expensive to make the first one. Textbooks are pricey and Harry Potter
is not because textbooks sell hundreds of copies and Harry Potter sells
hundreds of millions. (With a wee bit of portfolio theory going on where HP
also has to pay for advance checks written to all the talented single mothers
on welfare who write books in obscurity but who are not J.K. Rowling and do
not become billionaires because their books have more typical outcomes and
sell ~X00 copies worldwide.)

------
brohoolio
The article states people are getting hoodwinked but then goes on to blame
academics.

"So why don’t academics simply stay away from the greedy publishers? The only
answer I can think of is vanity."

Or that the publishers are misrepresenting how the books might sell.

~~~
harry8
Why didn't the author name the publisher? So librarians, unfamiliar with
esoteric fields can put a black mark next to that publisher's name and only
buy from that publisher if requested or approved by an academic in that field.
Surely the reputation damage that should be inflicted would stop such
practises _if_ _they_ _exist_. But we have a claim with no evidence at this
point.

~~~
librvf
I agree, the original article doesn't hold up well under scrutiny. Anonymous
source and no verifiable, relevant facts-- even facts that should be easy to
obtain.

~~~
dalke
Perhaps the author of an editorial in a British newspaper is aware of the
draconian libel laws in the UK, and doesn't want to name names to avoid a
likely lawsuit?

~~~
librvf
Perhaps. I think it's equally likely the story is low-effort clickbait that's
fooled over 200 readers at Hacker News.

