Monday, November 25, 2019
Annual annoyance
Every time the book + courseware is published, the publisher sends out a pile of free samples of the book to all authors. Most academic authors are professors, and they're supposed to distribute the samples to their colleagues. I doubt if this really happens.
It certainly doesn't happen here, since I'm not a prof and don't have colleagues. Normally I open one of the boxes and keep one book for a souvenir, then toss the rest. Since I never use the souvenirs, this time I just hauled the boxes directly from the front porch to the trash bin.
Wasteful, and even worse than wasteful. At my age hauling a heavy box is a bit risky. If the ground had been snowy, it would have been risky for any age.
I think the wholesale price of the samples is deducted from royalties. (This was true for previous publisher; don't know if it's true for current publisher.) Aside from the waste and risk, I'd rather not pay for samples that I can't use.
No point in asking for an exception. The previous publisher was a giant rigid NYC bureaucracy that couldn't make exceptions, and my current publisher is a small struggling company that would be unnecessarily burdened by setting up the exception. I'm just hoping that someone who works for some publisher will read this, and rethink the practice for ALL authors. Make it voluntary instead of automatic.
Labels: modest and stupid proposal
¶ 1:20 PM
