Distributing a separate format online⤵️↑
One can argue that publication rights/ copyright is for typeset book. Just plain text file/ other format can be considered entirely separate. Observe https://sarit.indology.info by various indolgists.
Engaging a publisher
An author may sell (some/ all) publishing rights to a publisher in exchange for “royalty” (usually small). Certain generous publishers may agree to online publication.
Distributing for free online
Despite publishing offline through some agency, some authors make it a point to distrubte their works for free on the internet (as pdfs etc.), some of them under a creative commons license. Examples:
- McComas Taylor’s versified translation of the Viṣṇupurāṇa was published open access on the internet under CC-by-NC-ND (VP site), while also being published and sold as a book by ANU press!
- Famed author NN Taleb made available freely available electronic version of “Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails” at his website, while selling physical copies.
- Haribhaktivilāsa of Sanātana Gosvāmin with translation by Broo, Volume One v5
- A South Indian Digest of Commentaries on the Nyāyasūtra - Gambhīravaṃśaja’s Nyāyasūtravivaraṇa—First Adhyāya by Oliver Philipp Frey, Brill Open access
- Dominik A. HAAS Gāyatrī - Mantra and Mother of the Vedas, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Open access
- Cidvilāsastava of the great Śrīvidyācārya, Amṛtānanda (fl. 1325-1375) - translation to-date by Dr. Ben Williams CC open access
Venues
- Good venues
- Parimal (Kushagra worked well with them. Moderately well known brand in N India. So helps when sending the book to Sahitya Akademi etc.)
- ANU
- HASP - do not charge OA fees
- FOSAS Open access journals list here
- Australian National University Press
- Hamburg University Press
- Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing – HASP
- Heidelberg University Publishing
- Open Book Publishers
- Ubiquity Press
- UCL Press
- Unior Press
- Venues with negative reviews
- Routledge
- indology discussion 2023-June.
Author’s negotiation
- Try to retain the right to distribute your work non-commercially, and allow derivatives. Don’t sign off all rights.
- Make an effort to bring up the concern. If it seems that you don’t care, they won’t care either.
- You don’t want to affect the publisher’s revenue while simultaneously taking advantage of his (paper-)book-specific (editing and marketing) efforts. Argue the below for other modes of distribution -
- They’re often not in the same format as the printed version. Effort that goes into formatting html pages is quite different from that involved in page-editing/ latex work.
- They usually don’t affect revenue (those who read audio books or ebooks don’t go for paper books).
- If the publisher goes out of business or refuses to reprint when out of copies, will you be legally allowed to publish by some other means?
- Royalty.
On-demand publishing⤴️↑
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Books are published and dispatched whenever a buyer places an order. यदा यदा क्रेता पुस्तकप्रेप्साम् प्रकटयति, तदा तदैव पुस्तकं चारु प्रकाश्य प्रेषयन्ति। मूल्यतः कतिचिद् भागं स्वयं रक्षित्वा शिष्टं लेखकाय प्रेषयन्ति।
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Comparison
- Author would have to prepare the book himself
- Author will have to self-market.
- Purchase cost is higher for the buyer (Oft economics of scale don’t apply).
- In 2016: “I paid 38 rupees per copy for Mahaviri Hindi third edition 104 pages 80 gsm metric demy 8vo For 1000+ copies Pothi quotes 82.5 per copy”
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Getting ISBN numbers
- India: RRRLF - free.
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India
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USA