[Sca-cooks] academic books was The Kitchen, Food, and Cooking in Reformation Germany

[Johnna Holloway]

Speaking as a librarian and co-author of an academic text intended for the library and specialist market, I must point out that the publisher here is not a university press. Rowman & Littlefield is an independent press. It publishes scholarly books but is not a university press. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rowman_%26_Littlefield

Do all university presses rip off their buyers? Not hardly. The Concordance of English Recipes which carries my name is available currently for $29.99. It's a 2006 paperback; you can purchase it on Amazon. It was published by MRTS through Arizona State University. Let me state, I derive absolutely no royalties from the book. I have never taken or made a dime from the book. When I supply copies for a charity donation or gratis copies within the Society, I must purchase those copies. My husband has a textbook out dealing with computer science and engineering. We figured out his payback for the number of hours put into it was approximately $2.00 per hour. He did not take any royalties for new copies sold locally. And once a volume has been sold, it enters the secondary market of sale and resale. The author never profits from the sale of used copies. Most of the royalties in fact have come from the sale of foreign rights. It's quite popular for example in Brazil. Did he need to publish a book for advancement? In his field actually, the emphasis is on research grants, outside funding, and producing papers. Spending time creating a textbook... Those hours are a luxury. 

There are reasonably priced university presses. One has to look for and patronize them. I would also advocate using your public and academic libraries. I buy books, but I also have some thirty plus university library books currently checked out. How many of us still use actual libraries? When was the last time you made a physical trip to use a library collection? Browsed stacks within the past year? Toured a library while in a distant city? How many searched an academic library catalogue or database within the past week? When did you last use a library?

E publishing is great and for members of the Society it is a way to share our research and conclusions within a like minded community. Unfortunately, if our research is ground breaking or of great value, too often the day will come when one awakens to find one's hard work and conclusions have been appropriated and downloaded in whole by another website. Your hard work, even if copyrighted, becomes just another part of another's ad loaded website.

Johnna

Sent from my iPad

> On Jul 1, 2016, at 5:08 PM, Patricia Dunham <chimene at ravensgard.org> wrote:
> Thanks for your efforts around reasonable pricing, Giano. It’s appreciated.  Sometimes it seems, these days, like University Presses think they’re supposed to be Medieval Guilds — price things sky-high to keep the info from the plebes, while at the same time justifying the high prices because you can’t expect too many sales!  self-fulfilling prophecy!
> and why the e-edition should cost ONE PENNY, literally, less than the hardcopy! Another anti-plebe Medieval Guild trick? maybe …snipped.   For decades. From one century into another! How that jibes with “publish or perish” eludes me, but there is SO much that is glancingly referred to but never published or even displayed on-line… argh!
> 
> sorry for the thread-jack, but it sorta’ hits a nerve.
> chimene 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jul 1, 2016, at 8:12 AM, Volker Bach <carlton_bach at yahoo.de> wrote:
>> Sheesh, their pricing sucks! Sorry about that, I suggested targeting the reenactment market with a reduced price. Will see if I can get some of you 'friends-of-the-author' deals.
>> YIS. Giano
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>