出版与作家生涯2015theguardian.com编辑精选
学者们正被忽悠着写没人买得起的书
Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy
导读
这篇文章讨论学术出版陷阱：出版社诱使学者花多年写定价高昂、几乎无人购买的专业书籍。对写作者的启示在于理解写作的受众定位、出版经济与自身收益之间的错位，以及如何避免被'出版'光环消耗大量心血。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写作前先想清楚真实读者是谁：受众越窄，越要确认有人愿意为它付费或有渠道触达。
- 02
不要把'被出版'当作目标本身，要评估版税、定价和销量是否配得上你的投入。
- 03
深度内容未必只能以书的形式存在，博客、论文、电子书等载体各有不同的受众与回报结构。
- 04
警惕出版邀约的诱惑：很多出版社靠作者免费或低价供稿获利，作者需主动了解行业惯例。
HN 评论精选
高价小众学术书是市场合理产物，替代品不是便宜的书而是根本没有书。
学者花多年写没人买的书，这几乎就是学术写作的定义。他们为极小众的读者（比如对19世纪日本侦探小说中女性形象感兴趣的其他学者）投入极深的写作。这恰恰是市场应有的结果：一种让学者把极小众的想法写下来、并放到读者能找到的地方的可行模式。这些150美元的书，替代品不是7.5美元的书，而是'没有书'——因为学者的考核不要求他们写同等深度的博客，他们实际上也不会去写。
patio11查看英文原文
Academics spend years writing books nobody will buy. That's practically the definition of academic writing. They go into incredible amount of depths for a very, very niche audience: other academics interested in, e.g., the experience of women in Japanese detective novels of the 19th century. (n.b. Actually a book, assuming I am remembering all the details correctly. An advisor spent years on it.) This is exactly the result the market should hope for: a profitable method which gets academics to write down very-incredibly-niche ideas and then put copies of them exactly where someone would expect to find very-incredibly-niche ideas. The alternative to these $150 books is not $7.50 books. It is "no book." They do not meaningfully trade off with equally-in-depth blog posts, because academics are not scored on, and hence do not as a matter of practice actually sit down and write, book-length blog posts.
批评文章用煽情化的错误数据夸大问题，提醒读者核查引用数字的来源。
这些书的研究由纳税人资助，购买者是纳税人出资的大学图书馆，但纳税人自己却读不到。美国每年据说花1390亿美元、英国花47亿英镑在研究上，太多钱进了大口袋。——这算什么垃圾文章？为什么不就学术出版骗局这个具体问题本身展开？那1390亿是包含非政府来源的更大资金池的一部分，整个资金池约4500亿。根据文中证据，大学图书馆经费来自纳税人的比例可能是0%到100%之间的任何值。这是《卫报》公然的误导。
librvf查看英文原文
These may sound like stories of concern to academics alone. But the problem is this: much of the time that goes into writing these books is made possible through taxpayers’ money. And who buys these books? Well, university libraries – and they, too, are paid for by taxpayers. Meanwhile, the books are not available for taxpayers to read – unless they have a university library card. In the US, taxpayers are said to be spending $139bn a year on research, and in the UK, £4.7bn. Too much of that money is disappearing into big pockets. What is this garbage? Why not let an interesting article about a specific problem (academic publishing scams) stand on its own? Why pour on sensationalized, over-simplified, misleading "context?" According to to study where those numbers came from, the $139bn the federal government spends on "research" is a part of a larger pool of "funding for research" that includes non-government sources, which is like $450bn. Universities (not just the libraries) are getting about $60bn from the big pool. In other words: the study, at least the results referenced by The Guardian article, does not say ANYTHING about the flow of money from taxpayer wallets to university libraries. Based on the evidence presented, the fraction of university library funding from taxpayer dollars could be anywhere from 0% to 100%. This is blatant dishonesty from The Guardian. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf14307 Oh and one more thing: The "good" part of the article is written by an anonymous source with no verifiable facts (no publisher names, no book names). I have no real reason to dispute its authenticity, the idea certainly seems plausible, but I can not verify any of the claims being made without basically starting my own study from scratch.
学术出版陷阱同样存在于技术图书领域，作者投入巨大回报极低。
这篇文章完全可以扩展到软件开发者。我见过几位声誉卓著、为开源社区贡献良多的优秀开发者，被'忽悠'着为Apress这类公司赶写出肤浅的书。也有人被卷入这场游戏，投入至少半年的半职精力，一年所得却买不起一辆像样的二手车。市场与本文描述的不同，但写作者的遭遇往往一样。
hellofunk查看英文原文
This article could easily be expanded to include software developers as well as academics. I've seen several excellent developers with strong reputations contributing to the open source community get "hoodwinked" into rushing out shallow books for companies like Apress. I've seen other developers also get sucked into the game, only to see less income from the work in one year as you'd need to buy a modest used car -- after months of at least half-time effort. The market and problem for these books is a bit different than the market described in this article, but the symptoms on the writers is often the same.
廉价电子书是获取领域综述的高性价比途径，对非明星学者反而是合理出路。
大体上说，非顶尖学者的廉价电子书等于大量数据免费泄露：顶级同行评审期刊很贵，重要会议论文集常按付费阅读运营。某无名大学的普通学者以不到20美元的价格卖出一本领域综述加最新文献回顾，简直是捡便宜。
DrNuke查看英文原文
Broadly speaking, cheap e-books from non-stellar academics are an incredible amount of data leaked for free: top peer-reviewed journals are not cheap at all and relevant conferences proceedings are often run on a pay-for-view scheme. The non-stellar academic from Windy Hill University, Nowhere, will sell a good summary of his/her field and an up to date literature review for less than $20. Bargain.
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