There’s been quite a stir in Sydney Anglican circles following the publication of a small e-book by John Dickson which argues that 1Tim 2:12 should not be understood to prevent women from giving sermons. I’ve finally gotten around to reading it for myself and thought I’d post my review.
Books
now’s the time to buy!
For all of you who’ve been holding off buying a copy of The End of Wisdom, now’s the time to buy. Eisenbrauns have a great sale on an array of titles including The End of Wisdom, and for international customers, shipping is half price!
book pricing
There have been a number of posts recently lamenting the ridiculously excessive pricing of some books from certain publishers.
The volume linked above costs $329.99 US (about $390.00 AUS). It is 360 pages, so not too short, but nonetheless very, very expensive. Apparently it is print-on-demand.
So if I had a PDF of the book and wanted to publish it using this technology, how much would it cost me? For a base-level I went to Blurb. Assuming I can produce it in black and white (seems reasonable given the subject matter), and if I want a hardback and a small size (13cm × 20cm), this book would cost $29.95, and that’s without any volume discounts!
Now certainly there are costs associated with editing a book, getting ISBN sorted, and other matters that aren’t included in the Blurb cost, but nonetheless, it seems entirely unjustifiable for OUP to price any volume as they have.
Perhaps the solution is for authors to stop submitting manuscripts to such publishers. It is pretty certain that most individual buyers cannot afford to but such books. Thankfully there are publishers such as Eisenbrauns who produce good quality books at good quality prices!