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List:       lyx-users
Subject:    Re: Help for paper about LaTeX/LyX and the meaning of life
From:       Steve Litt <slitt () troubleshooters ! com>
Date:       2009-03-24 17:18:38
Message-ID: 200903241318.38629.slitt () troubleshooters ! com
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On Tuesday 24 March 2009 09:52:32 am Charles de Miramon wrote:
> stefano franchi wrote:
> > On the other hand:
> >
> > * LyX produces glorious output--through LaTex---but that's not that
> > important to me, because no one in my field would accept a LaTex file. In
> > fact I doubt they would even know what it is. And they would not accept a
> > camera-ready file either. Almost everything is retyped or, most likely,
> > imported from Word into a DTP program. I personally enjoy looking at the
> > beautifully formatted output produced by LaTex, but it is a purely
> > narcissistic pleasure. No added benefit there. I believe this to be
> > pretty much the norm in the humanities (after you graduate: your
> > dissertation may be the last piece of writing you control from beginning
> > to end).
>
> From my point of view (working in the humanities in France) is that copy
> editors and typographical work are quickly disappearing in Academic Press
> in Europe. Nobody is making any money selling books in humanities and even
> serious book publishers  are transforming in a simple book printers.

From my perspective, it's not just Academic Press, it's not just Europe, and 
it's not just copy editors and typographical work. I belong to a mailing list 
of small publishers, and not a day goes by when the changing book industry 
isn't discussed.

In the old days, an author hired an agent who pitched a publisher who hired a 
printer and sold to a wholesaler, who maintained warehouses and sold to the 
bookstore chains who sold to the reader. That's A LOT of middlemen, each of 
whom wants his cut. 

Meanwhile, book printing costs a fortune, especially in reasonable quantities. 
I've heard that the average title sold by a top tier publisher sells three 
thousand copies in its lifetime, meaning that a modest 2000 book print run 
can be a year's supply or more. Warehouse costs, sometimes water damage 
costs, and if the book only sells 500 copies, remainder costs.

With the advent of the eBook, it doesn't have to be that way. "Printing" an 
eBook, complete with personalization at the bottom of every page so the 
reader thinks twice about posting his copy for the world to see, it the 
running of a one minute computer program. I have no doubt that one could 
sufficiently automate Paypal, a website and home-brew computer programs to 
fulfill 1000 book orders per day with no human intervention, straight from 
author to reader. Bye bye middlemen!

The publishers of old used MS Word because all authors were likely to know, 
use and own it. Also, MS Word has great versioning so queries, answers and 
modifications can be seen if needed. The publishers of old had special 
computer programs to turn MS Word into a typographical format (probably 
LaTeX), and an army of artistes to properly format pictures. It worked out 
great and the author received five to fifteen cents on the dollar.

Today, more and more there's no publisher or other middlemen. The author gets 
up to 96 cents on the dollar (Paypal still gets their cut, and I'm glad to 
give it to them). The author not only writes content, but also does the 
typography. LyX is EXACTLY what the author needs to go it alone. The 
typography benefits of LaTeX are obvious, but in addition, LyX offers a 
simple text format that's perfect for book personalization, which in my 
opinion is a must for eBooks that are sold instead of given away.

We've recently seen the demise of local newspapers, and the migration of 
surviving newspapers to electronic format. Electronic format is MUCH cheaper, 
and can be done on a "just in time" basis. The same changes are starting to 
occur in the book world. More and more, the author will need to be 
responsible for formatting. A computer programmer Geek like me could probably 
do the formatting in plain old TeX, but Joe Average author needs a tool to 
make formatting simple. That tool is LyX.

The one thing I'll add is that LyX's simplicity has one hole in it -- the 
difficulty of creating and modifying styles (environments and character 
styles). I'd anticipate that the new "layout module" feature will help quite 
a bit with that, by making a single style a single file and therefore easier 
to build and debut, and more likely to have already been done, and able to be 
added to whatever document class you're already using.

SteveT

Steve Litt
Recession Relief Package
http://www.recession-relief.US


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