Translated material
Books to order
With the development of technology, printing books to order (Print on Demand) is becoming increasingly popular. For example, many major scientific publishers have translated books of past years to this system whose circulations have already been sold out, but occasionally someone in the world has a need to acquire one copy necessary in the work. Now this approach has ceased to be rare when publishing new art books. Finally, it seems that even magazines are ready to switch to Print On Demand. We asked a somewhat question to the science fiction writer Pavel Amnuel , which is part of the editorial board of the magazine Milky Way. Questions were asked by Sergey Popov .
- There is a magazine Milky Way and a publishing house with the same name. What appeared before?
-In the beginning-in 2009-the Milky Way Internet magazine appeared. In it, we print works of art, guided by the principle of "all genres are good except boring." The magazine is published on the first Tuesday of each month, more than 60 issues have already been published. The magazine is available on the network [1].
Quickly, the Milky Way gained fame among the Internet publications, the number of our authors exceeded a hundred. We publish for the most part science fiction (simply because such works are often sent to us), but there are realistic stories and detectives.
One of the differences between the Milky Way from many other Internet publications is that in addition to artistic prose, the magazine publishes popular science articles. There are special applications for this: “Big Explosion” and “Dark Matter”. Readers of the magazine can not only learn about the latest cosmological ideas, but also read critical materials about the so -called “paranaca”.
A year and a half ago, the idea arose to publish, besides the magazine, also books. So the Milky Way publishing house appeared. Our difference and other publishers is that we publish books that are interesting to “our reader” - an intellectual, a lover of literature, which makes us think. Some books that we published, at one time, abandoned monsters like AST and Eksmo, under the pretext that these books are too complicated for their readers. For ours - just right. We have fewer readers than large publishers, but everyone is important and interesting, especially since we do not print the circulations of our books, but make the books “to order”.
- Why did the decision appear to print the books “to order”?
- The book publishing is now experiencing a crisis, or rather, a period of structural reorganization. Readers en masse on the Internet, download and read books in electronic version. The paper book is gradually “losing ground”, the circulations are steadily reduced. A lot of printed books remain in warehouses, not in demand and actually intended for disposal. If the circulation is still reduced, to several hundred copies, then the publication of the book becomes an enterprise, obviously unprofitable.
Meanwhile, a modern digital technique allows you to print books on literally one copy. If, with a conventional (say, offset printing), the cost of publication decreases with an increase in the circulation, then with digital printing such dependence does not exist. At the same time, digital printing is rapidly improved and the cost is reduced. Why print a three -thousandth circulation, not knowing whether it will be sold out (and often even having confidence that it will not be sold)? Why keep hundreds of thousands of books in warehouses, not knowing whether they will be in demand by book trade firms? This is the first reason why we decided that our publishing house will print books only on individual orders.
The second, more pragmatic: we simply did not have so much free money to print thousands of copies of books at our own expense, store them in a warehouse, for which we also need to pay, agree with wholesalers who take a large percentage, etc. Under the printing method “to order”, the publishing house spends money only on the preparation of the book: editing, proofing, layout of the original machine, manufacturing of the cover. No typographic expenses - they are taken by the buyer, paying for the purchase when ordering a book. Naturally, preparatory work is also laid down in the price of the book.
At the same time, it is necessary to sell books not as it is now. There are already shops in the United States (though there are still a few of them), having their own cars for digital printing. In these cases, the buyer has the opportunity to look on the computer screen, what the book looks like, “flip through” the pages, after which he pays for the order, and he is printed and issued on the spot. In Russia, there are no such stores, and therefore you can buy a book only on the Internet, on the publishing house or in other online stores. In the store of the Milky Way [2], you can order a paper book (and it will be printed on the same day and sent to the buyer by mail) and (or) an electronic copy, which, of course, is several times cheaper. The file of the purchased book is sent to the buyer by e -mail immediately after placing and paying for the order. Visually, the electronic book does not differ from paper: the same layout, the same cover. By the way, it is even cheaper to buy in the online store just a text file that can be read in popular electronic readers. The Milky Way has agreements with other online stores, and our paper books can be ordered, for example, in the ozone online store (a copy of the book is printed in one of the Moscow printing houses), and electronic versions in the Litres online store.
In my opinion, not only the “Milky Way”, but also the publishing “monsters” will eventually switch to this method of working with customers. Will bookstores disappear after that? No, of course, the form of book trade will change, which is already happening.
- Now usually, rather, the transformation of a paper magazine into a network. And the opposite is true for you, why?
- We do not turn the network magazine into paper: paper is an addition to the network, since many readers still want to "hold a real magazine in their hands." The paper journal gives an additional opportunity to advertise a network edition, and, conversely, on the Web we advertise a paper journal, which increases the reader's audience.
In fact, the paper “Milky Way” is an independent magazine, and we accept for the publication “on paper” only those works that are “not lit” on the Internet (except for the natural requirement for the authors so that the text is interesting and well written). In addition, buying the Milky Way in the online store, the reader has the opportunity to choose: order a paper or electronic version. Over time, presumably, the ratio of sales of paper and electronic versions of the Milky Way will increase even faster in favor of the electronic edition, but there will probably be some (possibly insignificant and constantly decreasing) number of lovers of “paper reading”. The printing method “to order” will save the paper version of the magazine in the future, when electronic copies of books and magazines will become widespread.
The difference between the network and paper magazines is also the one that the Milky Way network is distributed for free, any published work can be read (and download) on the magazine website. The paper “Milky Way” (and its electronic copies) go on sale in online stores, therefore, the authors are presented that the works they offer do not lie in free access.
-Tell us about the popular science component of the magazine. Who is its authors?
- The popularization of science was one of the main tasks of creating the Milky Way. In the Internet version, we have the “Big Explosion” and “Dark Matter” applications. The first publishes popular science articles on the achievements of modern science, in the second-critical materials exposing the anti- and para-quasinauka, whose adherents, unfortunately, are now a lot.
In the paper "Milky Way" there is a section "Science on the Internet." In the first rooms, this is a mandatory article that briefly informs about the news in various fields of modern science (with links to the corresponding Internet resources). Here, in sufficient detail it is told about the scientific achievements of the last three months, and, importantly, the article gives links to specific pages on the Internet, where you can find more detailed information. The news of science “On the Internet” is supposed to be published in every issue of the magazine.
In addition, each issue also publishes popular science articles written at a level more “serious” than it is customary in “ordinary” popular science journals. These are the article by Yuri Lebedev about the famous mathematics Revolt Pimenov and his ideas in the field of topology, an article by Mikhail Shulman about the problems of modern cosmology.
Of course, the magazine is in dire need of good popular science materials about any field of modern science, and I turn from the pages of the newspaper TRV-NAUKA to colleagues-scientific journalists and scientists: write to us! Of course, all materials are paid to the authors. True, the payment system is different. For the publication in the paper “Milky Way”, the author receives a one -time fee, as in a “ordinary” magazine. For publication in the network edition (Bolshoi Explosion and Dark Matter), the author receives a monthly small amount from advertising on the site. But this small amount (a kind of “royalties”) is gradually growing, since the text “hangs” on the Internet, and money is constantly “dripping” to the author’s account.
-Does the publishing house plan to print popular science books?
Yes, the plans have such an option. But here there is a problem of expert assessment of the manuscript, which will be accepted for publication. There are areas of science (astrophysics, for example, literary criticism), in which the editors of the Milky Way are competent enough to assess the level of the text sent for publication. We will publish such books in the first place, and as you solve the problem of scientific examination, we will publish popular science books in different fields of science. We have already published the book “Unknown Alexander Belyaev”-this is the serious literary work of Anna Andrienko (Moscow), who collected and commented on almost all previously unknown pre-revolutionary works of the science fiction writer. In the work, my book "Magic Crystal of Fantasy" about the methodology for the development of creative imagination.
2. Http://litgraf.com/shop.html?shop=1
3. In Moscow, the Print ON Demand service can also be found, although books printed in this way are much more expensive. See www.kommersant.ru/doc/1503074 and http://infox.ru/short/business/2011/07/15/v___moskvu___prishli.phtml