Re: Book on future of STM publishers

From: Arthur P. Smith <apsmith_at_APS.ORG>
Date: Mon, 22 Jul 2002 23:36:20 -0400

On Mon, 22 Jul 2002, Fytton Rowland wrote:

> It has always been quite easy (if you have the money) to get a book printed.
> Publishers are not printers. The business of getting a book printed is only
> one (and not the most important) of a publishing company's functions. Editing
> to improve the quality of the raw product from the author is one of the
> important ones, and marketing to bring it to the attention of those who might
> be interested in its content is the other. I believe that both of these
> functions remain important in an electronic-only environment.
>

And both functions are as important for scholarly journals as for
books, although instead of that nasty term "marketing" we usually refer to
a journal's "reputation". but it performs the same function of bringing
content to the attention of those who might be interested. Of course
a book stands on its own, while a journal article is represented as
part of a greater whole (why is that, though, in the electronic
era?) resulting in the one functional distinction Stevan claims
makes the book example irrelevant: book publishers also collect royalty
payments for authors.

                        Arthur Smith (apsmith_at_aps.org)
Received on Tue Jul 23 2002 - 04:36:20 BST