Re: copyrights and the net (long post)

Hi Ranulph,

Thanks for your message. It made me think.

The discussion  of copyright, publishing and IP ownership seems to benefit
by looking deeper into the whole context.

As you say, we are publishers and employ publishers.

<snip> I don't believe I'm the only person who reads this list who believes
they publish too much... even if this does destroy the publishers. <endsnip>

Self-publishing is still publishing and runs to the same economics,
including the economics of scale.

What destroys commercial publishers also destroys self publishers.

Whatever offers opportunities for self-publishers,  offers even more
opportunities (reduced transaction costs) for larger business publishers.

If professional publishers can't make money out of a publishing media, why
would one expect authors (without scale or expertise) to do better?

As you know, the rough economics of publishing are as follows.

Out of the final sale price of a book, the money divides roughly three ways,
i.e.

Retailer 33%
Distributor 33%
Publisher 33%

From the publisher's 33%, this divides roughly, and very variably depending
on book run (for short run university texts, proofreading/typesetting and
printing tend to dominate the costs) into:

Printing 10%
Promotion 5%
Typesetting 2%
Administration overheads 5%
Author royalties 5%
Losses (books that don't go anywhere)  5%
Profits 0%

For electronic format, add website continuous rebuilding cost, security
issues, financial management (almost zero if supply books via a
distributor), and reduce retailing and logistics costs.

Also there is a natural market limitation. Texts like films and music are
serial communication media  and the amount individuals can read is limited
by time. This limits take up of texts regardless of how cheap they are sold.

Not actually much to play with profitwise!

Is it viable to self publish online? At the moment, profitable publishing
onlione seems to depend on the value being achieved elsewhere, or getting
someone else (e.g. the universities) to foot the bill.

Getting universities to foot the bill is interesting. As universities move
to a business model, most universities become aware that their income
primarily comes from teaching and that research is done at a loss (which is
how universities have bribed businesses to let academics do research for
them). Recent government funding metrics focus on academics creating a small
number of high quality academic papers rather than funding bulk publication.
In addition, universities have not typically been good at running publishing
businesses and many fail or are quietly closed (its very easy for that 0%
profit to become negative)

These factors suggest that funding academics to create publications is
likely to reduce in the near future.

Overall, the situation seems to point to an increase in need for
professional publishing businesses with the reduced transaction costs being
reflected in reduced costs to readers much in line with the Kindle model.

In this mix, copyright is a funny thing and unclear where its boundaries lie
if we argue that digitalizing media makes IP redundant, i.e. if it's assumed
anyone can freely and without control copy and distribute anything that can
be converted via digital media.

That leads to interesting questions such as,

"Is therefore acceptable for me to publish a journal article by you under my
name?" (the words are copyable by digital media and IP is irrelevant).

On reflection, it seems in general that the argument for free copying is an
opportunistic one!

Warm  regards,
Terence
____________________

Dr. Terence Love
Praxis Education
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
orders@...
Tel/fax: +61 (0)8 9305 7629
www.praxiseducation.com
____________________