Should I seek a publisher for my new book or publish it myself?

As readers of this blog will know, I've made my previous academic books available over the internet via Google Books.  Anyone wishing to read Television's Window on the World, based on my doctoral dissertation, Global Television and the Politics of the Seoul Olympics, co-authored with Prof. Heung Soo Park, Television in the Olympics, co-authored with Miquel de Moragas and Nancy Rivenburgh, and several other books and monographs, may do so via the internet.

Now, I'm in the middle of writing my own account of the role of telecommunications in Korea's transformation.  It is written in the first person, in order to draw upon my personal experiences spanning the past four decades or so.

My question is very simple.  Should I seek a reputable academic or commercial publisher, as I've always done in the past, or publish it myself? (via one of the services that allow e-book and more conventional formats) I'm well aware that the book publishing industry has been turned on its head by the information revolution and perhaps even more aware that there is no financial reward for publishing academic works.

I'd love to hear reader opinion on this, since it may influence just how I "publish" this new book.   Thanks in advance for your input.

Digital Development in Korea Now Available in E-book Formats

Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society, is now available via Amazon.com in a format for Kindle and other e-readers.  It looks quite nice on the 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab device I've been using.  And, of course, the electronic version has the advantages of being hyperlinked and searchable.  

Digital Development in Korea is Finally Published!

Over the weekend I stopped by my old office to pick up mail and, to my surprise, found a package from Routledge in London containing a single advance copy of the book that Dr. Oh Myung and I wrote.  Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society. (see Routledge web site for details)  It was very satisfying to finally hold a printed copy of the book in my hands, as regular readers of this blog will know from my prior posts about it.    Just use the search tool at the right and enter "Why a Book" to see all of my posts dealing with my personal motivation to undertake this project.

I've written or co-authored a number of books over the years, but this one is very special, mostly because of the opportunity to co-author it with Dr. Oh.  

The e-book version of our book should be available very shortly.  In the meantime, the hardback edition has been rather widely publicized and marketed around the world via Amazon and many other booksellers.

It is an interesting experience to work on a printed book in this day and age of instant electronic communication.   Dr. Oh and I worked on the book for nearly three years and delivered the final, edited manuscript to Routledge in early August of last year.

If any readers of this blog happen to read our book, I'd be pleased to entertain and respond to comments here.

Christmas Gifts and the Future of Books

It is Christmas Day, 2010, and all around the world people are unwrapping their Christmas gifts.  A very considerable number of these gifts will be e-readers or tablet computers.   The recipients of these gifts will, in turn, download a large number of e-books, magazines, newspapers and other products being offered for these new devices.  The New York Times took note of this phenomenon in an article titled "Christmas Gifts May Help E-books Take Root."

There seems to be little question that the growing availability of tablet and e-reader devices, coupled with the increased availability of books in electronic format on the internet, will drive a major shift in reading habits all over the world.  The local press here in Korea has taken note, as in the Chosun Ilbo article entitled "Print Publishers Find New Life Through Tablet PCs."  The embedded illustration accompanied that article (click to see a larger version).

So far, I've held off on purchasing a tablet-sized device.  Although the form factor of the iPad is appealing, I still consider it too heavy as a reader.   However, I'm sure that as costs continue to come down and these devices become lighter in weight and with more features, I'll become a user.  The question of whether I will use such a device to read books has already been answered.  In fact, the majority of books I've read in recent years, along with magazines, newspapers and academic journals, have appeared on my computer screen.   I'm sure this is true for most of you who read this blog.

Why a Book on Digital Development in Korea: Reason 5, the Review Process

I've just finished reading the first page proofs of my forthcoming book with Dr. Oh, Myung entitled Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society.  Doing so couldn't help but remind me of a fifth reason for writing the book:  the review process.  Writing a book like this starts with a proposal to the publisher.   That proposal undergoes review by acquisitions editors and sometimes series editors.  In the case of academic books like ours, the publisher sends out the proposal, including a number of chapter drafts, for a confidential peer review by other scholars in the field.  Then, assuming the book is accepted, the manuscript goes through one or two more reviews before and after the typesetting stage of production.

Yes, these multiple reviews may at times become tedious from the author's standpoint, but there can be little doubt that they contribute immensely to the quality of the final product.  I was reminded of this while responding to specific questions raised by the copy editor who read the page proofs before they were sent to us for review.

Why a Book on Digital Development in Korea: Reason 4, the Book Format

Within a week or so my co-author and I should receive the first page proofs from Routledge of our forthcoming book, Digital Development in Korea: Building an Information Society. Routledge has published preliminary information about the book on its web site here.   This post is another in my series of thoughts about why I would want to co-author a book on this topic.  Why write a book, especially one that is subjected to a long process of blind (anonymous) peer review, and then takes 6-8 months to produce and print?

A fourth reason is simply that the book format is proving remarkably resilient in the face of digital convergence and the information revolution generally.  Google has its book project.  The Kindle and its competitors are all "e-book" readers.  In the midst of all the current changes, the concept of the book (versus the magazine article, newspaper article, blog post or many other shorter formats) holds a certain attraction for both readers and potential authors.   Despite the rapid growth of the internet and various digital information sources that it interlinks, many doctoral students around the world still strive to publish their doctoral dissertations as a book!

Whether in e-format, hardback or paperback, there is something about the book that appeals to human readers around the globe.  I recall once, during a conversation with my co-author when I mentioned publishing it in e-book format, he smiled and said something to the effect that "but you still need to print a book!"

Having said all this, it would seem that the delivery format for books is shifting toward electronic readers and digital distribution via the internet.   However, the length and basic chapter structure of a book are likely to stay with us for some time to come.

You're invited to contest or add to my Reason #4.   More reasons to come in future posts.  

Will Physical Books be Gone in Five Years?

CNN is carrying an article today based on an interview with Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab, who predicts that physical books will be largely gone in five years.  I encourage you to watch the interview on CNN's video as well as reading the article.

A basic part of Negroponte's argument is that old-fashioned printed books cannot be produced in sufficient quantity to reach the populations of developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  However, he also notes that, for him at least, the iPad experience of reading a newspaper is superior to reading the paper version.  As an author, I've made all of my books and monographs available free of charge via Google Books, and I actually prefer to read them electronically, mainly because of  (1) the ability to search the entire content of the book, (2) the hyperlinked table of contents, and (3) the hyperlinked index.  Actually, I rarely use the index anymore, given the search capability.  However, as one of those individuals not gifted with a photographic memory, I frequently find myself wondering exactly what I wrote or how I structured an argument in a book written decades ago.  Today, I can pick up my iPhone, launch Google and quickly search the full text of, for example, Television's Window on the World (my first book, based on my doctoral dissertation.)  Moreover, any of you who wonder what the world of television news was like back in the 1970s, before CNN and long before the Internet and Google News existed, can do the same thing!

I will chime in and basically agree with Negroponte's prediction, although I think he's using a bit of hyperbole to make the point.   I expect that some people will continue to print their own books or use "print on demand" services to get a paper copy.  However, most of us will prefer the power and convenience of light weight, high quality color readers with full internet connectivity.  The players in Korea's display industry should anticipate and lead this global trend.

Why a Book on Digital Development in Korea: Reason 1

Here goes.  The idea occurred to me some time ago and I've decided to act on it.  In a series of posts over the next 4-6 months, I'm going to share with readers of this blog some of the reasons why I teamed up recently with Dr. OH, Myung to write our forthcoming book, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society Routledge, March 2011.  Let me be clear from the beginning that these posts reflect my own perspective, not necessarily that of my co-author, who has a long and distinguished career in Korea's ICT sector, and has written or spoken publicly on many of these issues.

One of the first reasons for undertaking this book project was quite simple.  There appeared to be no other scholarly book in existence that examined South Korea's ICT development over the past three decades.  Back in the 1990s I had spent more than two years researching and writing The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1995)  Well over a decade had passed since that book was written, years which I spent as an administrator with the Fulbright Commission in Seoul, formally known as the Korean American Educational Commission, with responsibilities for our academic testing (mainly TOEFL) and technology (the web was becoming the principal channel for study abroad advising).  My personal experience of Korea's burgeoning networks and electronics sector convinced me that an update of my book was in order.  So, I contacted editors at Oxford University Press in New York, London and Hong Kong with my idea.  After some weeks of e-mail consultation, they declined to even receive a proposal for a new book, citing the lack of a market for such in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries.  Whether or not there is/was such a market is a topic for another post.

To some extent it is true that the world took note of South Korea's digital development, especially when it emerged with the arrival of the new millenium as the world leader in broadband internet penetration as shown by leading international measures.  It is also true that the ITU published a short monograph entitled Broadband Korea:  Internet Case Study in 2003, the OECD has published voluminous statistics, and the World Bank has paid attention to the Korean experience through its project and series of publications on Korea As a Knowledge Economy.   Ahonen and O'Reilly's book, Digital Korea, which appeared in 2007 is an industry-oriented survey of the Korean experience.

In addition to these efforts, there was a measureable increase in the number of articles appearing in scholarly journals about the Korean experience.  However, given the magnitude of Korea's ICT-fueled development, one might have expected a dozen doctoral dissertations and at least half that many books to appear over the past decade and a half.   The story of why such research was not undertaken and published in English is a complex one involving lack of Korean language and area expertise on the part of Western scholars, coupled with a lack of incentive for leading Korean scholars to publish in English for a world academic audience.

However, I stand by my argument.  One of the first reasons for co-authoring Digital Development in Korea, was that there were no other books available that offered a similar treatment of this important topic!

Note to those of you with e-readers

As a courtesy to present and future readers of this blog, I've just made it easier to link directly to the full text online or a PDF download of my 1995 book, The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea. Just click on the cover image at the right. The gadget was previously set up to go to my personal website and required two clicks to get to the actual Google page with PDF download capability.

A small, but hopefully helpful change.

The Hiatus: An Explanation for the lack of posts recently

I just realized that the interval during which I have not posted a single entry on this blog is the longest since I started it almost three years ago.   Here's why.  As most of you know, I have a full-time day job with the Fulbright Commission and that is quite busy during this 60th anniversary year of the Fulbright Commission in Korea.  However, there is another reason, relating to the origins of this blog.



I've been working on a new book, to be published early next year by Routledge.   It is titled Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society  and is co-authored with an individual who, more than any other single person, is credited with energizing South Korea's ICT sector back in the 1980s, leading to the "Telecommunications Revolution" here in that decade.  Routledge is already publicizing its availability.



When I started this blog, it was initially with the thought of using it as a sort of "electronic scrapbook" in connection with writing a new book.  At that time, I didn't know that Dr. Oh and I would eventually choose to co-author a book, and I was uncertain about the role of this blog.  However, I've met quite a number of interesting people through this medium, and so it has served its purpose beyond my expectations.



I'll have more to say about the the book as it gets closer to publication.

Strength in Software/Content Versus hardware: The E-Learning Initiative

The Korea Times yesterday carried an article on the government's new e-learning initiative that sheds some light on the importance of content and software in driving the use of digital devices.  Reportedly, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has spent about $255 million to install electronic blackboards or interactive monitors for showing electronic content in 256 middle and high schools across the country.   The article notes that, according to critics, these screens are not seeing much use yet, because of the absence of appropriate electronic content.

Converting whole textbooks into digital content and using it in classrooms would be considered illegal under current rules, so teachers are limited to using excerpts from the texts.

The overall project also calls for the provision of e-book readers to a 110 schools in rural areas of Korea, but the government says it will not spend more than 1.1 million won for each device, while the companies involved in the project say they cost more.

There is always a balance to be struck between the provision of digital networks and equipment to be attached to the networks, on the one hand, and content or applications, on the other.  Although there is currently controversy over the e-learning initiative, the story is far from over.