Coturnix has assembled the Science Blogging Anthology using a self-publishing service. It seems like a bit of a cheat: skim the cream off a bunch of blogs, stick 'em together, and presto, you've got a 336 page book. Technology is just like magic, isn't it?
- Log in to post comments
More like this
Let's say there's an interesting but somewhat obscure book I'm interested in. Say, Electromagnetic Pulse Propagation in Causal Dielectrics. It's a very technical work about a very specific subject, so the total print run was probably very small. Maybe a few hundred or a thousand or so? I have…
The Best Science Writing Online 2012 edited by Jennifer Ouellette and Bora Zivkovic is decended from the old Open Laboratory series of anthologies which featured the fifty best science blog posts (and a poem and a cartoon) from the year in question. The series as a whole was organized by Bora…
Sunday Conversation: The case for Pluto | SciGuy | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle
The controversy just never ends...
(tags: science astronomy planets media blogs)
Chromoscope
How the Milky Way looks at a variety of different wavelengths.
(tags: astronomy space science pictures physics galaxies…
Many science bloggers, myself included, have plans to write a book. Of that creative pool few actually bind their ideas in a volume and get it onto shelves, but new self-publishing services like lulu.com have made it easier for writers to publish and sell their books. This service allowed Ed to…
You can say the same about any anthology. I'd say it's damned impressive that he managed to assemble this thing, including a peer review process, in just 3 weeks.
Not only that, but an anthology that a lot of nerds will want to buy. I wonder what Bora's profit margin is?
I don't know what his profit margin is, but I'd suspect, unless this thing becomes a bestseller, that his hourly rate won't be much better than working for McDonald's. My guess is that he'll be lucky to sell 500 books, and even if he's making $5 per book, that's probably less than $10/hour, given that he's been working nonstop on the project for three weeks.
Interesting. I think I'll go blog about it.
I suppose even editing a science anthology isn't particularly easy. I had a highschool science teacher who wrote one unit of a physics textbook and she said it was totally not worth it financially. Being a science writer is not a good way to get rich.
My boss once invited me to co-author a book chapter on mouse technology in "The Laboratory Mouse (Handbook of Experimental Animals)". Finally each of us got something like 130 Euro (before taxes). Thus, in financial terms it was not worth it.