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.

Comments

Re:What about quality control?

[GeorgeH]

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)

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What about quality control?

[fable2112]

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 ... I don't really find this terribly encouraging.

Yes, it's good to have alternative sources of info. (That's why I read /. in the first place!) However, there really ought to be some sort of quality indicator in place, even if it's just abstracts and reviews of the books/papers posted up there.

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*