Every time, you think it couldn't get any worse, a new revelation tops it off. As an author, I wonder how long it will take for the book market to be completely enshittified.
Thank you for the #giftArticle! ⬆️ @writers@bookstodon
Here's a list of publishers distributed by SPD until SPD closed down, erased their website, and ceased communication. Supporting small presses directly right now could be the difference for them between survival and not.
@bookstodon Hey, I love me some Penguin Random House as much as the next reader, but I'm also interested in the indies, which are usually more daring than the Big Five.
Favorite indie publishers? Please add to my list:
Two Dollar Radio
Bluemoose
Unnamed Press
Coffeehouse
Small Beer
Graywolf
Catapult
Driftwood
Black Spot
Future Tense
Copper Canyon
Tin House
Dzanc
Melville House
Quirk
Blackwater
Red Hen
City Lights
Algonquin
Black Rose
Hellbound
Wakefield
Fledgling
So. I will never again knowingly buy any book "published" by Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons or Penguin Random House. I won't give my money to content-hoarding corporations.
I'm grateful to authors who take the time to write up their stories of mistreatment by #journals and #publishers.
The publicity can help in their own cases. It can help unknown authors who didn't have the same freedom to publicize their experience. It can help raise standards in publishing.
I don't like the #OpenAccess publishing contract from the 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘊𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘕𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘴 (published by the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences and the #IEEE Communications Society). But I do like the fact that the journal made it OA. That helps authors decide whether to submit work there, and supports easier comparison to other contracts. All journals should make their publishing contracts OA. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=10387284
These journals still compete for authors. But for authors submitting to #Elsevier journals, impact metrics matter more than price. For authors submitting to #Hindawi journals, turnaround time matters more than price.
None of these people exist, but you can buy their books on Amazon anyway. Here's an article on Amazon authors with GAN-generated faces and the books these authors publish (which appear to be almost entirely devoid of original human-created content).
As a life-long fan of the Narnia Chronicles (and C. S. Lewis in general, misogyny and racism aside), it vexes me inordinately that all new editions of the Chronicles are published in chronological order, rather than in the order in which they were written (and were obviously intended to be read).
From Jeff Pooley: "One near-term consequence of the the [#NYTimes#lawsuit against #OpenAI and #Microsoft] may be a shift in the big #publishers’ approach to #OpenAccess. The companies are already updating their licenses and terms to forbid commercial #AI training —for anyone but them, of course. The companies could also pull back from OA altogether, to keep a larger share of exclusive content to mine." https://upstream.force11.org/large-language-publishing/