In article , Roderick
Stewart wrote:


It's a valid point, and one that I've often thought about myself, but
consider the practicality of any alternative. For example, you've spent
a lot of time, money and effort in creating something of "intellectual
value" such as a book, a picture, a piece of music etc. It's value is
embodied in the idea of it and not any material object that contains
it, so it would be easy to make copies at little cost.

In my experience, writing a textbook takes around 1-2 years, and may
involve some years of collecting and understanding the relevant material
before that. It does not seem unreasonable to me to expect that if someone
wants the results, they pay something for the work/time/effort involved.
Particularly if the info boosts their own ability to earn a living.


What can you do if they then create and sell enormous numbers of copies
(because they have a publishing system in place to do this and you
haven't), and make huge profits, and you are left with nothing?

Alas, this still happens quite a lot. Many 'pirate' copies of textbooks are
published in the 'third world'. This may be fine if it means that the
poorer people get cheaper books. But where will the next textbooks come
from if no-one pays the authors?...

Above said, not many authors would be able to live on the royalties from a
few textbooks. Most 'academic' authors therefore tend to write them for
other reasons than the royalty cheques... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

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