Oh, this is so hilarious! Yeah, I know that in my own field of history that many professors wrote about very specialist topics that really didn't have a huge audience so often these books only had rather limited print runs, so as a student you had a pay a ton to buy these books.
Yeah. Classics grad here, so I'm well accustomed to the phenomenon of the 40-page book that cost the student $50. These books aren't nearly that bad, and I imagine that if one were a professional in the field, one might find them well worth the $35 (or, for authors, $21).
Thing is, these books probably won't be used in any courses at all, except maybe a very very specialized policy course. They're the proceedings from a series of conferences; the grants that funded the conferences covered the costs to publish. As the publisher, we really just cover our costs making these things, but we like having them give breadth and depth to our higher-ed list, and they're comparatively easy to put together, so we're happy to do them. We are, however, not enthusiastic at the notion of losing money on them.
Yeah, I think your position is totally reasonable. And I think that this person trying to do a end-run around trying to pay for another copy was totally tacky!
In regards to the various history monographs I was assigned to read, years later I went on Amazon, and I was amused to see that many of these book didn't even have any reader reviews. I'm no longer in the history biz, and I write mainly fiction nowadays, but I continue to work on a project that grew out of my research in grad school. However, I work on this book knowing full well that probably very few people will be interested in this rather specialized topic. :-( However, if by some miracle it ever sees publication, I'll be sure to badger and wheedle my publisher for as many author copies as I can get, just like your dignified contributor did. :-P
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Thing is, these books probably won't be used in any courses at all, except maybe a very very specialized policy course. They're the proceedings from a series of conferences; the grants that funded the conferences covered the costs to publish. As the publisher, we really just cover our costs making these things, but we like having them give breadth and depth to our higher-ed list, and they're comparatively easy to put together, so we're happy to do them. We are, however, not enthusiastic at the notion of losing money on them.
Reply
In regards to the various history monographs I was assigned to read, years later I went on Amazon, and I was amused to see that many of these book didn't even have any reader reviews. I'm no longer in the history biz, and I write mainly fiction nowadays, but I continue to work on a project that grew out of my research in grad school. However, I work on this book knowing full well that probably very few people will be interested in this rather specialized topic. :-( However, if by some miracle it ever sees publication, I'll be sure to badger and wheedle my publisher for as many author copies as I can get, just like your dignified contributor did. :-P
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