[Buddha-l] Publishing books (was Rain)

[Richard Hayes]

On Monday 27 August 2007 11:05, wongwf at comp.nus.edu.sg wrote:

> May I humbly plead with scholars here that the next time they intend to
> publish a book, do consider a publisher that won't charge an arm and a leg
> for the price of the book.

After my experiences publishing through Kluwer (and having to buy books that 
colleagues have published through Curzon, Routledge, Brill and so on, I 
heartily agree. The chair of my department has been urging us to consider 
publishing as much as possible on the Internet or at least through affordable 
publishers rather than going for pricey prestige.

> I am still considering whether to use my 
> pension to acquire Richard's book on Dignaga.

When I came to UNM as an untenured assistant professor a few years ago, I was 
treated to all the perquisites that a beginning academic gets, including 
a "start-up" grant for buying books. These days I have been trying to sell 
books rather than buy them, so I used part of the grant to buy a copy of the 
Dignaga book for the UNM library. I got a "bargain" copy for $250 or so. A 
few days after I handed the book over to a delighted librarian, who handled 
the book as if it were a gold brick, there was a major fire in the library. 
Among the volumes damaged beyond use was the book on Dignaga. So I am 
considering whether to use my pension to buy copies of the book for libraries 
that would like to have it (including the Buddhist Library in Singapore, to 
which I promised about a decade ago to send a copy as soon as I could afford 
one). Meanwhile, I'm exploring the possibility of putting out a revised and 
updated version of that book and publishing it either as a PDF file or 
through an affordable Indian publisher.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes