Quote:
Originally Posted by GtrsRGr8
Thanks.
Open Acess stuff can get very complicated. I'm glad that I don't have to know more about the "ins and outs" of OA than I do. My interest is almost solely in how I can get some _free_ high-quality ebooks in my areas of interest, like religion; I don't have to know the workings of OA very much to do that.
If I was an author having recently completed a book, I would want to know far more about the ins and outs of OA than I do.
One thing that is really hard to understand is why so many authors "sign on" to OA. There are an _enormous_ amount of OA ebooks out there, not even considering academic journals and "papers" that are OA, which are are very sizeable, too. Authors surrender rights; do much of the work that a traditional publisher would be doing if they had gone that route (your quote from unglue.it's FAQ was funny, although I'm sure that the person at unglue.it who wrote it didn't intend for it to be!); never will get any (direct, at least), profits, and have to pay some, if not all, of the publishing costs! OA publishers often have webpages devoted to selling authors on the benefits of going the OA route. The only advantage that I can see to an author (although, admittedly, I never have read completely any of the OA publishers' sales pitches) is publicity for the author.
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I think authors agree due to a combination of 'it still counts as a publication for the purpose of academia' and idealism. There may also be a note of 'it's not as if I'd be making money off this book, anyways'.
The last book you posted appears to be very much international academic idealism (particularly for Dr. Janet Hujon of the Khasi community, born in Shillong, Meghalaya educated in England)