[OT]Re: Books...

[Lars Ivar Igesund]

Yigal Chripun wrote:

> Manfred Nowak wrote:
> <snip>
>> Your respect has to go to the publisher as well.
>> 
>> -manfred
> 
> in what way did I disrespect the publisher? the copyrights belong to the
> authors, not the publisher. either I can use the services of the
> publisher and buy a paper book and thus will pay the publisher and the
> author, or I can download an ebook and pay the author (I also can buy an
> ebook through the publisher, and get an ebook plus the benefit of it
> being under some unnecessary protection scheme like DRM or password
> protection). Where does it say that that specific publisher has a legal
> right to be the sole publisher of the work?
> what if I asked Lars directly for a copy of the book? what if Lars is my
> neighbor and I prefer to pay him directly than drive to the mall to buy
> his book in the book store?

When it comes to the publisher, it has a much bigger role than just printing
it - indeed at least 4 persons at Apress (among them 2 types of editors) +
one external technical editor has been involved in creating the product
that has resulted in both the printed version and the ebook, and so the
publisher has an obvious financial stake in both versions. Thus I am not
legally entitled to sell copies of the book and take the money myself,
something I couldn't do in any case as I have 3 co-authors. Then there is
the last aspect of this particular book, and that is that all money that
otherwise would have gone to us authors (not the publisher's share, are
donated back to the D community (DSource and Tango sofar).

So in effect, this particular book wouldn't have happened at all without a
publisher.


> 
> The whole point of the internet as a medium of distribution is that I
> don't have to go through a middle-man anymore. Book publishers will not
> go away, since there will always be need for real paper books. it's just
> that they are no longer the only medium to distribute one's creation.

The medium is not at all the point of the publisher, indeed most publishers
don't print anything at all, that is the job of a printing shop. The
publisher is there to make sure the contents of the book are presented
properly, and can mean a fairly large amount of work on their part.

-- 
Lars Ivar Igesund
blog at http://larsivi.net
DSource, #d.tango & #D: larsivi
Dancing the Tango