dimitri said:
Or directly to the editor in chief in the Netherlands, Harry Baggen:
redactie@elektuur.nl
But I think they want you to reduce your 100 pages with at least 90%
Most of the Elektuur/Elektor publications are more practical than theoretical and of limited length.
Steven
> I assume as soon as it is published in such a mag it is definitely public domain and...
Public Disclosure. "Public Domain" is something else.
As Jan says, print publication should give you invention priority over any later inventors.
> patent examiners cant really be certain to have covered all of the bases, no matter how hard they try.
Current US Patent Office does not even try. They throw-back a few things for being old, but mostly if your papers are in order and fees paid, you get a patent. They've gone over to the plan that Jan mentions: if nobody fights it, who cares? if someone does fight, let the courts decide. In that sense, a US patent is just a "disclosure".
A good patent attorney will do a search to see if the claims were made before, in patent or in print, and to see if the claims can be expanded (inventors rarely see all the commercial ramifications of their discovery). But there are plenty of patent attorneys who just put your papers in proper format and don't bother investigating.
> I sent her the hard copy anyway....
Too late now, but I think you missed my point. Nobody should do hard work without knowing the rate of pay. Editors will ask an unknown author to submit a small sample (THAT'S what I mean "like your style"), but you should NOT have worked for weeks without finding out what your labor is worth to potential buyers. For an article, do at most one page until you have firm interest at a good price. A novel/book, maybe a chapter. But never the whole thing, unless it is a one-page toss-off.
> If she decides she wants to publish, she will have to pay...or fagetaabouiit !!!!!!!!!!!
Hate to say this, but: publishers often DON'T pay. Most publishers and almost all editors are ethical, and plan/hope to pay, but things go wrong. Notice how many people in this thread have dropped, or plan to drop, their subscriptions. That is the most dangerous time for an author: the editor, in good faith, accepts an article for payment upon publication (which really means "after they collect for the ads in that issue"), then the magazine goes bankrupt. Happened to my mother, except it was a newspaper and they owed all their writers for many-many words. Long legal battle and not a good result.
> 100 pages...A4
I've never seen a 100 page article in a magazine. I can't think of a long article series that actually ran 100 pages, not even Steve Dove's monumental mixer series.
You nearly have a book. But no publisher is buying books like that. The book racket now is all about making a real profit in the first 30 days. Even established authors who have books that sell well for years are unable to get published in today's book racket, because they won't rush off the shelves in the first month.
An increasingly interesting alternative is Print On Demand (POD). You file your manuscript in print-ready format, and promote your book. When orders come in one-by-one, the POD operation takes the buyer's money, shoves your file through a monster laser printer and binder, ships it, and cuts you a check when your split of the pie piles up. The author has a big investment in writing and type-setting to PDF, but the printer has no investment in each book: a few bucks for file storage. When a book is bought, the printer charges per-copy for printing, binding, shipping. Some let you set your royalty, which added to the print costs gives the selling price.
Lulu is one such operation. Lulu FAQ. I have not dealt with them. They seem to give authors a good deal, though it is up to the author to stir-up interest and sales. 100 pages at Lulu costs $6.53 to print. Set the selling price at, say, $10. The total royalty is $3.47. Lulu's angle is they take 20% of that (yes, on top of their printing charge). You get $2.77 per book: sell 1000 books at $10, make $2770; set the price at $20, sell 200 books, make $2164. Picking a price is a good guessing game. There are a dozen other POD operations, check it out. There is one case of a (fiction) author selling many thousands of copies via POD. I think my uncle sold about 50 copies of his novel, but he was pleased.
> Mikeks is a she?
My friend says: ...the question was, is there any way to tell who is male or female on this msg board.... and the answer is: "Ummmm ... sometimes if you right click on the person's name and then lift up your mouse's tail and look underneath you can tell."
Public Disclosure. "Public Domain" is something else.
As Jan says, print publication should give you invention priority over any later inventors.
> patent examiners cant really be certain to have covered all of the bases, no matter how hard they try.
Current US Patent Office does not even try. They throw-back a few things for being old, but mostly if your papers are in order and fees paid, you get a patent. They've gone over to the plan that Jan mentions: if nobody fights it, who cares? if someone does fight, let the courts decide. In that sense, a US patent is just a "disclosure".
A good patent attorney will do a search to see if the claims were made before, in patent or in print, and to see if the claims can be expanded (inventors rarely see all the commercial ramifications of their discovery). But there are plenty of patent attorneys who just put your papers in proper format and don't bother investigating.
> I sent her the hard copy anyway....
Too late now, but I think you missed my point. Nobody should do hard work without knowing the rate of pay. Editors will ask an unknown author to submit a small sample (THAT'S what I mean "like your style"), but you should NOT have worked for weeks without finding out what your labor is worth to potential buyers. For an article, do at most one page until you have firm interest at a good price. A novel/book, maybe a chapter. But never the whole thing, unless it is a one-page toss-off.
> If she decides she wants to publish, she will have to pay...or fagetaabouiit !!!!!!!!!!!
Hate to say this, but: publishers often DON'T pay. Most publishers and almost all editors are ethical, and plan/hope to pay, but things go wrong. Notice how many people in this thread have dropped, or plan to drop, their subscriptions. That is the most dangerous time for an author: the editor, in good faith, accepts an article for payment upon publication (which really means "after they collect for the ads in that issue"), then the magazine goes bankrupt. Happened to my mother, except it was a newspaper and they owed all their writers for many-many words. Long legal battle and not a good result.
> 100 pages...A4
I've never seen a 100 page article in a magazine. I can't think of a long article series that actually ran 100 pages, not even Steve Dove's monumental mixer series.
You nearly have a book. But no publisher is buying books like that. The book racket now is all about making a real profit in the first 30 days. Even established authors who have books that sell well for years are unable to get published in today's book racket, because they won't rush off the shelves in the first month.
An increasingly interesting alternative is Print On Demand (POD). You file your manuscript in print-ready format, and promote your book. When orders come in one-by-one, the POD operation takes the buyer's money, shoves your file through a monster laser printer and binder, ships it, and cuts you a check when your split of the pie piles up. The author has a big investment in writing and type-setting to PDF, but the printer has no investment in each book: a few bucks for file storage. When a book is bought, the printer charges per-copy for printing, binding, shipping. Some let you set your royalty, which added to the print costs gives the selling price.
Lulu is one such operation. Lulu FAQ. I have not dealt with them. They seem to give authors a good deal, though it is up to the author to stir-up interest and sales. 100 pages at Lulu costs $6.53 to print. Set the selling price at, say, $10. The total royalty is $3.47. Lulu's angle is they take 20% of that (yes, on top of their printing charge). You get $2.77 per book: sell 1000 books at $10, make $2770; set the price at $20, sell 200 books, make $2164. Picking a price is a good guessing game. There are a dozen other POD operations, check it out. There is one case of a (fiction) author selling many thousands of copies via POD. I think my uncle sold about 50 copies of his novel, but he was pleased.
> Mikeks is a she?
My friend says: ...the question was, is there any way to tell who is male or female on this msg board.... and the answer is: "Ummmm ... sometimes if you right click on the person's name and then lift up your mouse's tail and look underneath you can tell."
EC8010 said:
The question to ask yourself is: do I want to publish to get money or to be read? If the former, there are more efficient ways. Journals only get a small proportion of there income from magazine sales, by far most comes from ads and other activities like book sales, back copies etc. This is a cut-throath business, and even the few hundred or thousand per month to be paid to authors count. And not all authors are equal. I think if NP writes in AX it may help sales, but if Mr Unknown writes it may not have any effect other then filling editorial space. So, one author may get more then another. I think I even read that NP does it for free because it helps him anyway.
Jan Didden
I fully agree with all your points, but if a magazine has to operate an entirely different business model to the entire rest of the world (receiving their income before paying the debts that produced that income) then you have to wonder if they deserve to be in business. I think EW's sales speak for themselves.
peranders said:Mike, if you really want money for your work, you could publish a pdf with password.
Hi PerAnders,
This is exactly what this forum needs: A section with articles.
I wrote my notes back then, as a compilation of postings here, which helped beginners. Maybe this forum could grow into a serious download-database some day, with all the non-commercial writes in here. (I won't say amateur, as most know much about what they do, just that they don't get paid for it.)
My "notes on DIY audio" is also a PDF, although for free, as it is basically a compilation of notes on different issues. My main problem is that there is no provider near me who accept hosting files for download. That's why I've kept them on my own experimental server (with all the downtime it includes). The PDF is still downloaded several times each week, so with any luck, a few actually get around to read it.
It would be nice with a proffessional server, though, to avoid all the down-time.
EC8010 said:
I have had paid articles a few times in several countries. My experience is that they pay you at about the time the issue with your article is published. And that may be several months, sometimes more than half a year, after they accepted it. They generally do advance content planning to balance the content over time and to make sure there is something interesting in each issue to compensate for your article .
. If you have a really good article that can be run in two consecutive issues, that would be particularly interesting. Note also that many magazines offer kits or PCBs or something for articles that they have published. If you keep that in mind in your article, it is again an added attraction to the magazine.
Publishing is a lot like real business. You must be better and more attractive than the next guy. Being the 6th guy proposing to write on a subject that has been beaten to death in the previous issues is not a good career move
.Jan Didden
I have http://b-one.net for 12 SEK a month plus fees = 29 SEK, 300 MB, free traffic, allows forums (see my sig below) etc.Jennice said:
If it's not too big document I can host for a while until you have your own domain fixed. I can really recommend b-one.net
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