Cheapskate publishers

[robinturner]

Someone from the publishing company was on the phone to me today. Apparently the boss thinks my estimate for proof-reading 200 A4 pages - 600 lira or about $400 - was way too high. This didn't surprise me. It was based on my normal rate of 3 lira per page, which is designed for shorter works, and I was already prepared to go down to 500 lira (which was what they paid me once for a weekend's work in the recording studio, so it's not like it's going to break the bank, even for a tiny publishing house like this). What did surprise me was finding out they only paid the author 300 lira! Yes, that's $200 for writing a whole book, with no royalties and all rights transferred to the publisher. At those rates, a professional writer would have to churn out five books a month simply to make ends meet.

Comments

/blink/

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

And here I am, year after year, spinning my wheels thinking yet again, "Ok, so writing for a living is the way out."
/blink/

Actually I dropped by to ask you about Harun Yahya (born Adnan Oktar in Ankara in 1956). Does this fellow have a presence in Turkey?

p.s. saw a brilliant documentary on WWI battles at Suvla / Galipoli last night, History Channel ... aweful stuff.

Re: /blink/

[solri.livejournal.com]

And here I am, year after year, spinning my wheels thinking yet again, "Ok, so writing for a living is the way out."

I imagine the situation in Canada is somewhat better.

Re: /blink/

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

Somewhat, yes. I'm sure there are regional differences: I don't want to live in either Vancouver or Toronto (the two economic hot-spots). What I've seen of Edmonton (Alberta) looks a lot like what I experienced in Nova Scotia: individuals who are well- and even over-qualified self-exploit in order to keep body and soul together ... meaning folk who don't quite fit the mold or have second-rate credentials *raises hand* are shit outta luck, pretty much.

Fact is there isn't the hard-edged hi-tech here that would really qualify me for the work ... it's mostly generic window-dressing. (The usuall cycle for things like web-sites is that they go through a series of iterations that brings the text up from gawd-aweful to acceptably mediocre, by delegating tech-writing to anybody who's too dangerous to rely on with anything more mission-critical.)

[vret.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether you knew an archeologist called Rafi when we were at Uni. Since then he has become a leading expert on Roman Industry in Britain and a few years ago, after many years work, he finished his magnum opus on the subject. When he sent it to the publishers they decided that it was too expensive to put the illustrations he had described into it and they told him that they wanted to publish it without them. He considered them rather vital, and hired an illustrator himself. As a result, he has made nothing on the book, as a few illustrations cost him as much as the publishers have paid him for all the rest of it.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Publishers rarely pay much for academic books because the sales are usually so low. Professors write them because (a) they like doing that kind of thing, (b) it increases their reputation, putting them in line for better-paying jobs, and (c) if you're lucky and a good writer, you can later write undergraduate textboooks or more popular books about your field, and those do pay well - publish a book like The Tao of Physics and you're made for life.

What annoyed me in this case was that the book in question was an English textbook for beginners, and thus potentially a bestseller. Having me proof-read it is not just for the sake of accuracy; having an English name on the cover will increase sales. Anyway, time to get back to my other proof-reading job: the latest installment of Heidegger.

[hfx-ben.livejournal.com]

Seems to me that credible academics could at once supplement their incomes and contribute to the commonwealth by engaging the project I call "Participatory Deliberation" ... just imagine editing a hyper-encyclopedia whose impact would surpass (ok, perhas only rival) the library of Alexandria.

Imagine Wikipedia on steroids.

*sorry ... call me a zealot ... or, more accurately, desperate*

FYI

[cf.livejournal.com]

Just talked to a few friends here in beyoglu about this, and they receive in the order of 1000 ytl for a book for proofreading/editing. They get 1500ytl or so for translation.

Re: FYI

[solri.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I can use this as ammunition!