[Buddha-l] Publishing books (was Rain)

[Margaret Gouin]

On Mon, August 27, 2007 6:27 pm, Richard Hayes wrote:
> 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.

There is a website called LULU (www.lulu.com) which allows authors to
self-publish online; readers have the option to purchase a printed and
bound copy (at a price). This might be useful as a starting model or
source of ideas for academic publishing.

The issue came up at the last seminar of the International Association for
Tibetan Studies (2006). The IATS commits to publishing every paper
presented at its seminars; the proceedings now run to somewhere in the
region of 18-20 volumes, each one very expensive. The problem obviously is
that there are very, very few libraries that will pay to get a complete
set every three years or so. As of the last (2006) seminar, the folks at
IATS still hadn't got their heads around the idea of publishing in
electronic format on a DVD, although I think (hope) there's some movement
in that direction. We'll see at the next seminar (2009 or 2010).

Another advantage of DVD publication is the possibility of including
high-quality images, not to mention video and sound.

All in all, the best way to go--surely?


-- 
Margaret Gouin
PhD Candidate
Centre for Buddhist Studies
Department of Theology and Religious Studies
University of Bristol (UK)