About three years ago I was asked to write a chapter about the project I work on for the second edition of a book on bioinformatics software. We had contributed a similar chapter for the first edition, so it was just a matter of rewriting the introduction and updating the technical details, and of course I said yes. My colleague who had written the original chapter said that although there was no advance, I might get some small royalties eventually, albeit probably only enough to buy a round of beer.
Would that it were that much!
About a week ago I finally received a royalty statement from the publishers. Not a cheque, mind you - they only pay those if your royalties are over $50. Mine came to the princely sum of $20.86 - and that's on the sale of over 200 copies of the book! Now granted, it was only one chapter of a thick textbook, but even so, they're going to have to sell another 300 copies before I see a penny. And therein lies the rub...
Owing to the original publishers being bought out, the book was over a year late - which is an eternity in internet time. The chapter I wrote is still usable, but the screenshots of our website were out-of-date shortly after the submissions deadline, never mind the eventual publication date! No doubt a few more sales will trickle in, but I would be very surprised if they can double their sales of what is now a three-year-old software book. Which means no-one is likely to get a royalty check.
Of course it could be worse. Late last year I was told to contribute a paper to a set that was being published by our project, and not only is there no payment to authors, but the publishers charge an outrageous sum of money (over $1000) -- "administrative fees" -- to publish each paper! Thankfully this is paid by the institute, not by me, but even so...
In fiction circles we call that vanity publishing, and are warned to avoid it like the plague. The academics have no such luxury - the publishers have them over a barrel, in this "publish if you want a career" climate - so it's no wonder that the impartiality and quality of even the most respected journals is coming into question. However that opens a whole can of worms that I'm not really qualified to comment on - just google "academic publishing integrity" (or similar) for a window on the subject.
My point is: all you fiction writers out there, next time you are bemoaning the difficulty of getting published, or the poor renumeration, consider the unhappy science community, who are forced to publish whether or not they have something to say -- and to pay for the privilege. At least we are still free to choose...
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