Re: Post Factory

Man, do **I** ever agree on this one, Judy!!

Let me tell you, and I'm sure all book writers will agree, it is a long time
before you even break even on sales of a book. With the thousands of
dollars, not to mention literally thousands of HOURS of research, I put into
the Experimental Workbook, I am sure as hell not going to put it in PDF
anywhere.

Not to mention the fact that I, personally, want to read a BOOK, not a
MONITOR.

Aside from the fact that the price of PF is ridiculously low to begin with!
I would've bought back issues for twice that price! Look at the magazine
back issue price, and they're mostly ads.

Sell it, Judy, reprint it...it may be your children's only inheritance, for
all you know. When my parents died, the stocks I got from my mother were
decimated by Wall Street, but now my father's out of print book has risen to
the $125 mark in places. Just too ironic.
Chris

----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 1:15 AM
Subject: Re: Post Factory

>
> On Sun, 18 Sep 2005, Sandy King wrote:
>
>> I hope that eventually all of the issues of Post Factory will be made
>> available in .pdf format. Post-Factory was a unique contribution to the
>> literature of alternative photography and all of the issues were
>> interesting and informative. The material really deserves a wider
>> audience than that of the paying subscribers, which I was from beginning
>> to end.
>
> While I certainly appreciate the endorsement (thank you!), I'm blessed if
> I can understand why "the material deserves a wider audience than that of
> paying subscribers."
>
> Which raises the question (similar to one asked 10 years ago on this very
> list when the claim was made "knowledge should be free") of
> why folks willing and able to spend, say, $5 plus shipping for a single
> blank sheet of paper, that is, paper with nothing on either side, that
> they may then proceed to wreck with a technical error or other
> miscalculation, wouldn't spend approximately $4.50 + postage for 48 or
> more pages covered with information, not mindlessly stamped out by
> machine, but assembled painstakingly by others whose time (which they're
> not making any more of) is more valuable than a piece of paper.
>
> Or, why do folks deserve NOT to pay for what others did pay for... isn't
> information MORE valuable than, say, a latte, or a sheet of ultra deluxe
> paper?
>
> And another point. The History of Photography list is doing a thread about
> retrieving depth-of-field info from manuals printed ca 125 years ago.
> Assuming there is a world with folks who can read, & life not reduced to
> subaquatic organisms 125 years into the future, is there a prayer that
> today's Internet info would still be readable on those systems? It will
> almost certainly be lost, while a pile of National Geographics, or even
> Post-Factory's moldering in an attic would be readible, that is, assuming
> living creatures can still read, not regressed from global worming.
>
> But keeping the info either way -- in printed form by reformatting
> remaining issues for digital reprint OR on website for PDF-- both are very
> labor intensive... (Malin worked VERY hard to get #1 in PDF-- thank you
> Malin!) Why should that labor be donated free to folks who don't care
> enough to spend what is of course far less than the actual cost to
> produce? (I, for instance have donated my time free these 6 or so years --
> and actuarily speaking I have less of it left than most folks on this
> list...) And of course contributors, including Sandy, to both P-F AND the
> websites give their labor free...
>
> I don't blame folks for taking what's free, but I don't see why it's owed
> them...
>
> Meanwhile -- although having Issue #1 on the alternative photography
> website has been a godsend (thank you, Malin!), so far all but one of the
> new subscribers who viewed it there, wanted the print version of #1 when
> my bricks & mortar printer gets his digital machine re-re-refixed,
> although I offered to pro-rate price and postage without it.
>
> But then these folks were actually paying "subscribers."
>
> I'll add that by cosmic coincidence, the same day as Sandy's e-mail, I got
> an e-mail from Canada that a pack of issues had arrived (very far north),
> adding, "I am so grateful that one can still obtain such a delightful
> publication on real paper."
>
> But all these sources, real paper or virtual, are created by minds
> contributing knowledge, experience and TIME (which in case I forgot to
> mention, they're not making any more of) without pay. Websites in the
> field are also, AFAIK, subsidised by labor of the site owner (among
> others). And the formal intensive demanding labor of producing either a
> website OR a publication in print cannot be compared to casual fragmented
> discussion freely given on this list.
>
> (I do however wonder what, for instance, Phil Davis wrote for publication
> gratis, while [ironically] reflecting on how much of HIS information is
> now obsolete.)
>
> And I assume that approximately 450 pages of closely packed text are NOT
> so easily whisked into PDF (Malin worked very hard on just one issue) and
> don't see any particular reason to do so....Except of course expectations.
> Folks have learned to expect website type information free, though not
> sheets of *blank* paper.
>
> I have various problems ... but providing this material in other formats
> isn't one of them. However, I do appreciate the compliment, as I daresay
> do all contributors. Thank you.
>
> Judy
>
>
>
Received on Tue Sep 20 06:59:54 2005