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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 ver
by patio11 11y ago
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.
- jakobegger 11y agoI think you drastically overestimate the quality of the books this article talks about. These publishers will publish any rubbish you give them just to profit from selling to librarians who do not understand enough of the subject matter to know they are being scammed. I've been contacted on Facebook by these scam publishers, inquiring if I'd like to publish some of my university essays. There are plenty of alternatives. Most of the niche knowledge is distributed via scientific journals and conference proceedings. And many scientific publishers will happily publish books on any obscure topic, if you pay for printing. Scientific publishing has plenty of problems, but these kinds of "publishers" are the worst; they leech off already stretched library budgets for short term profits without providing any value to society at all.
- patio11 11y agoI don't think we disagree very much about the likely level of subject-specific due diligence these publishers will do. I think we disagree very much about the likely level of subject-specific due diligence done by any publisher on any title picked at random from a university library. Peer review is, like Santa, a story we tell to motivate little children; academics (particularly in the humanities) are their own QC departments. And many scientific publishers will happily publish books on any obscure topic, if you pay for printing. I feel like I have to say "I do not understand the relevance of this fact to the claim that the academic press is a staunch bulwark against incorrect facts receiving its imprimatur."
- jakobegger 11y agoI agree that a lot of low quality work is published even with peer review. But I don't think publishers should be gatekeepers; it's generally impossible to judge the quality of academic work without being heavily invested in the field yourself. So I don't have a problem with publishing rubbish as long as you pay for it yourself. What I do have a problem with is that these people try to collect anything that they can get their fingers on, put an ISBN on it, and then sell it to libraries at horrendous prices. This is not about making knowledge accessible, this is solely about scraping a bit off library budgets with the least amount of effort. (Edit: language)
- librvf 11y agoI don't think we disagree very much about the likely level of subject-specific due diligence these publishers will do Which publishers? If this is a real problem, there might be real solutions but those won't be found if we are busy debating narratives without digging down into the details.
- jordanpg 11y agoI think it's pretty clear from context that the author is referring to junk scholarship, or something pretty close to it. If a book really is written and then forgotten by the world, it was never a serious part of the discussion. And a discussion, however small, is what academia is.
- Steuard 11y agoEven if you're cynical about peer review, there is a world of difference between a publisher that sends manuscripts to subject experts that it identifies on its own and a publisher that (as in the article) asks the author if they have any friends who could take care of the reviewing. I've served as a reviewer for textbook chapters before. Maybe I'm the exception, but I took that responsibility seriously (and sent at least one back with a "don't even think of publishing this without a complete rewrite" response).
- librvf 11y ago> I've been contacted on Facebook by these scam publishers Which publishers? If they are scams they should be exposed. The linked article included no verifiable details.
- a3_nm 11y agoWhy do these books have to cost $150? The academics won't be getting this money, those publishers essentially won't be involved in helping improve the book, and it doesn't cost $150 nowadays to get something published, even if you want a printed version.
- amouat 11y agoBecause it's a scam. The publisher makes money by tricking libraries into buying the titles.
- garbal 11y agoAs an academic I check out and buy super specialized books all the time. $150 is not too expensive if it can save me a few hours of work by summarizing an esoteric topic, which frequently is the case. The publisher doesn't matter, just the reputation of the author. This is not beach reading, it is an input to an industrial process.
- notahacker 11y agoIt's weird, because HN is usually the first place to downvote people into oblivion for complaining about how outrageous it is that B2B App X costs $15 per month when the majority of software aimed at consumers now sells for 99 cents or is given away for free. B2B App X generally doesn't have the unique content or extremely niche audience of the hardback, heavily revised version of one's Phd thesis either.
- dalke 11y agoPerhaps because HN readers think they can write equivalent B2B software in a weekend and monetize the result through ads, in-app purchases, and gamification, while they don't think they can write a book or good documentation that others would pay for?
- datashovel 11y agoSo if I understand correctly, we should depend on a corporation to decide where these books end up and who has access to them? It sounds like a terrible idea to me. Not all great thinkers / researchers / inventors end up being University professors. If it doesn't end up being a book or article or in some way shape or form in writing, that the professor wants anxiously for every human in the world to read about, then chances are it wasn't worth writing about anyways.
- coliveira 11y agoThe mistake here is that professors don't write for "every human in the world". They write specifically for a small number of people who are well versed in the research topic they work on. While it is possible that this information might be useful to others, this will usually happen as a consequence, not as the primary goal.
- datashovel 11y agoYes, that is correct. But it's not to say that it's not what the professor would like. In the age of the internet (as is mentioned in the article) it seems pointless that in order for a specialist in my field to read my "magnum opus" you must fly out to some obscure state University and hope that (a) the University will allow them to check out the book being that they're not a member of that University, and (b) they think it's important enough to do so. Perhaps it was missed, but the article was written by a professor. The point isn't that all humans in the world would be able to comprehend (or even care) about the contents of the book. The point is that they should have access to it, and the professor (who supposedly cares deeply about what he/she studies / writes about) should want all humans in the world to have easy access to it). Something that is easy to achieve, but apparently not happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan Imagine where academics could be if, for example, people like Ramanujan had access early in their career to all of the most important ideas in their field of interest. The more obscure an idea or field of study, the harder it's going to be to get it into the right hands.
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- jimhefferon 11y ago> The alternative to these $150 books is not $7.50 books. It is "no book." I disagree. One alternative, for instance, is online publication of a .pdf. These are available to anyone, regardless of location, time zone, or ability to pay.
- evgen 11y agoDo these throw-away PDFs have an ISBN you can put on the CV? No? In that case, from the perspective of the academic, they are useless.
- RogerL 11y agoYes, you can self-publish and get an ISBN number.
- jimhefferon 11y agoISBN's are easily bought, for a reasonable price.
- oneJob 11y agoMy wife and many friends are academics. They don't exactly just type the thing up. Writing books for them is a painstaking process during which they sacrifice and put their blood, sweat, and tears into those pages. I think this article is saying, there is a disingenuous motive on the part of the publisher. The article does not seem to imply that the authors are complicit by playing along and pumping out the academic equivalent to pulp-fiction. When an academic puts their name on a published piece of work, it's a serious thing. To accomplish something worth attaching one's name to, it's not economically feasible for the vast majority of academics to write pdf books pro-bono. Often their already barely making a livable salary and have their plates full. To expect them to write books for free is not at all reasonable. I agree with the other commenter that this is indeed a good outcome. Paying academics to write these niche books is paying to build the modern Library of Alexandria. Walking through a top tier university's library, one can't help but be in awe of the wealth of knowledge being accumulated. And it has value. Some today. Some down the future. But it has value. I myself have made use of several of these esoteric books, and could tell that they'd barely, if ever, been read. I couldn't help but feel some gratitude toward the author for writing something so wonderful given it feeling like they'd written it for me and a few dozen other people. But then, others used the products I created based on that work. And so, in that sense, they wrote for those people too.
- peterarmstrong 11y agoThe 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/all https://leanpub.com/bookstore/earnings_in_last_7_days/all/al...) 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...
- Blahah 11y agoThat has little to do with the fact that they are ebooks, and everything to do with the fact that they are about data science. Just about the sexiest 'academic' topic right now, and in extremely high demand outside academia. For the vast majority of academic books, there is simply little or no demand.
- roel_v 11y agoThe book you list as your #1 book is most certainly not an 'academic' book. Just because a book is written by an academic, does not make it an academic book. Just the byline gives it away ("A Guide for Anyone Who Works with Data"), but the description even more so: "This book describes, simply and in general terms, the process of analyzing data. ... This book is a distillation of their experience in a format that is applicable to both practitioners and managers in data science. " In other words, "we've written down our experiences as applied statisticians". Which is fine and actually it sounds like it would be useful for me, but it's not "academic publishing".
- rayiner 11y agoData 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.
- dang 11y ago> Academics spend years writing books nobody will buy. And always will. My favorite example: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150723840/for-japanese-linguist-a-long-and-lonely-schlep http://www.npr.org/2012/04/16/150723840/for-japanese-linguis... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8275064 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8275064).