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Fatbrain's eMatter Self Publishing
blindambition writes "Fatbrain announced a new initiative called eMatter. Basically, for 1$ per month, you can put your book/paper online, set a price, and people can download it, while you get the royalties (between 50 to 100%) of each copy sold. " Excellent idea, although it's still not open-source writing, like Project Gutenberg. But then again, I suppose living authors need to eat too.
i fail to see why anyone would need a centralized
.02, and too lazy to log in at work -adam showtell.com javanet.com/~user
site for open source publishing...isn't that what homepages are all about?
while the lack of security within the "web
medium" makes it difficult to enforce copyright
/ ownership, i tend to think of it as relative.
if someone were to make unparalleled fame and
fortune off of my work, perhaps i would be pretty miffed
to some degree, but i highly doubt that would
ever come to pass, heh.
also i feel that open source
lends itself to the origional intent of
the writing i do quite well;
in the sense that it is provided more as
a brainstorming and thought provoking tool,
rather than trying to rant my personal
theories and such.perhaps more opinionated
authors would have more dificulty than i with
such an arrangement.
*digression*
i currently maintain many open source
pieces of writing (both prose and short story)
on my personal website: , and although this site may have more
exposure currently, the downside is obvious in that it would be "lost in the crowd" so to speak.
open source literature at least has the potential that someone will build upon it,
and perhaps i would become known, at the very least,
as the origionator of a genius' inspiration.
Must _everything_ be an "open source" issue?? keerist already. there is a place for commercial information and software on this rock. some of us would be _very_ unemployed if it weren't for commercial apps/information technologies and to be honest, most of the mainstream devel would not have gone as far as it has (albeit the open source community has taken their knowledge of the commercial world and used it to create and extend current technology, but that is another story). and that's the point, isn't it? not _everything_ has to be open source to be a good thing(tm).
l8r.
--bc
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
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Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
I'm not saying that this service should be shut down. Far from it. I'm not even saying that it's a bad idea, per se.
I'm just saying that most people are NOT going to look upon books "published" on a site like this as valid or reliable information, and that there are some very good reasons for it. In fact, personally, I would consider what I found there LESS valid for informational purposes than something I linked to by way of
I'm also saying that I don't expect the things that appear there to be taken seriously by most people who care about intellectual integrity. Then again, it'll probably do a good business -- Ralph Blum certainly does, and he's not exactly known for accurate scholarship or accurate ANYthing.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
*chuckles*
Point taken.
However, there is an important distinction that the satire does not acknowledge:
Programming is more objective than writing. At a minimum, you can see if the end-result is functioning or not.
The great self-help fad notwithstanding, books don't usually have the same "this will work" characteristic implied in their use. The best you can really do is "Based on [insert data and/or personal ranting here], this is what should work for someone in your situation." But overall it's not going to be anywhere near as objective.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
It would certainly be an interesting way to get sources for a research paper. Then again, the vast majority of professors won't take that seriously. You'd better have at least a few papers that were published in actual honest-to-Deities scholarly journals.
Or do you mean a verbatim reprint? Yeah, I can see that happening. Not that it's a good thing Then again, the same thing would apply. You'd damn well BETTER have some journal sources, preferably journals-available-at-your-university sources, or someone will smell a rat REAL fast.
:)
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
when I am asked a question that is directed to my field of expertise I write, and write. I will give the partitioner a full explanation of what ever technology s/he is looking to get information on. For instance I was approached by a woman that wanted to pick my brain about e-commerce, I told her I would be glad to write my thoughts about her project down. I did this for free like a moron. As I have done a hundred times, now I can build a library of whitepapers that can be downloaded by people that ask flak for help. I charge 10-15 bucks and boom The reader/buyer is rewarded with knowledge and I am rewarded with a contribution to the buy Flak a Cray fund. Great idea Fatbrain.
Anyone who wants to submit a book - even if it's copyrighted (some of the PG books are, like Bruce Sterling's
- Hacker Crackdown
) should contact PG's top dude, Michael Hart (hart@pobox.com). He's touchy about stuff that's likely to be censored (no- Kama Sutra
yet...) but generally PG is quite eclectic, with a strong bias towards stuff out of copyright (older literature).I agree whole heartedly. Quality control of information is an utmost concern. I think everyone will agree with me that we cannot have people posting whatever information they feel like without strict editorial control.
Imagine a worst case senerio: Some screwball decides to open up his computer, and send whatever information he or she wants to whomever asks for it! No editorial control whatsoever! And worse, the information could somehow reference other information on other computers, "linking" it, if you will. Who knows how big this could get? It would be a gigantic mess, tangled in a web of lies that spans the world wide!
Luckily, we have strict editorial control over information, and won't ever have to deal with descerning for ourselves what information is true or false.
(Props to Swift)
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Traditionally, in the literary world, self-publishing is VERY much frowned upon.
While I don't necessarily agree with some of the standards (or lack thereof) that certain publishers have, I do have to say that the theory behind having your book sold to a reputable publishing house or your paper printed in a reputable journal is a good one.
Case in point of what can happen when people *don't* pay attention to this: Time's "cyberporn" article. Remember that? The one based off of an incredibly shoddy undergraduate "research paper?"
Given that any fool with a buck to spare every month can upload whatever drivel said fool sees fit to
Yes, it's good to have alternative sources of info. (That's why I read
And yes, I'm fully aware that some absolute crap gets published professionally (said Time article being an excellent example). But on some level that I haven't figured out yet, as a writer, this new form of publishing bothers the heck out of me even though I theoretically think it's a good idea. *shrug*
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today