On authors horrific: Blogpal Charles Gramlich has a new short, horror story available as an e-book. "Chimes" is at the Damnation Books website. Go, download, shiver!
On authors fantastic: If you're a fan of the essential Gormenghast novels written by Mervyn Peake, you may be interested to know that the Guardian reports a final tale, Titus Awakes, is being finished by Peake's widow, Maeve Gilmore, using the author's notes, to be published by Random House in 2011. What do you think about this trend of having famous fantasy series completed post-mortem from notes, as the Dune cycle has been by Frank Herbert's son with a co-author, and as was Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time by Brandon Sanderson last year?
On authors disposable: The WSJ has an article about Macmillan's new software that will allow college instructors to substitute material, down to individual sentences, replacing those the textbook author wrote. Read L. Gordon Crovitz's complete article here, edits mine:
"Appalling and preposterous" is how Jaron Lanier described this idea...He says anonymous groups creating content lack the accountability of an individual. "If you're worried about history or science being politicized, a mashup will be even worse. Individual textbook authors are not perfect, but at least they have a voice with consistency and creativity." [snip] It's understandable that textbook publishers would embrace new technology. Their business model is under pressure from secondhand sales. Print and e-books customized by instructors for their own classes won't be valuable in the used-book market, so innovative publishers reckon this will boost their economics.
Mr. Lanier warns this is another step in the open source, information-wants-to-be-free ideology. "Authors, journalists, musicians and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind," he writes. [snip] In the case of textbooks there should at least be transparency when the relationship between authors and students is amended. Readers should be able to know they've read the book the author intended or what changes were made and why. Technology creates opportunities, and the genie shouldn't go back in the bottle. Still, the integrity and authenticity that a single author provides should not be lost. As Mr. Lanier reminds us, technological progress is great, but we need to be sure it doesn't devalue our greatest growth driver, individual creativity.
How would you feel if you wrote textbooks?
Posts
6 comments:
Chimes looks damn good!
I'd be awfully damned annoyed. That which bears my name ought to be my words.
That's horrific. Since textbook writing was, in a way, the whole reason I went off to get my PhD, I'm particularly sensitive to that.
The whole thing is an outrage.
Paul- Yes, indeed!
Leah and Laura- My instinctive reaction is the same. Hellz to the NO! And what makes any old college instructor a better judge than the usual subject experts of what to leave in and take out? Some of my teaching profs- I regret to say- were leaning on the erudition of the assigned textbooks, not vice versa. And as the article's author points out, the editorial hand and eye that frames the facts makes a huge difference in the overall. From an original writer's standpoint, it stinks, but I think from a quality educational standpoint, it's just as bad.
Thanks for the link and support. As for the textbook thing, I have written a textbook and I'm troubled. The line between the author and the consumer is blurring.
This is hard for me to even imagine. I'm best at what I do which is not textbooks. Be sure to check out my new book!
Post a Comment