plunging in

[gfish]

I know I should stay clear of Amazonfail, but I just want to say that a publisher which can't make a profit selling $9 etexts (or $5, or $2) deserves to go bankrupt. If amortized editing and design costs are really the lion's share of a physical book, the system is deeply, deeply broken.

(Even applying design costs to the etext version is largely ridiculous. How much design work does an etext need? I'd prefer it as a raw text file anyway, but a LaTeX-generated PDF would also be just fine as well. The only reason for fancy design in the first place is to catch people's attention in a store. Etext selection and browsing is nothing like that, so why bother with it in the first place? Tradition? Snob factor? Anything that can't be seen in the scaled down image of the book cover in an Amazon listing is a complete waste of money.)

I remain unconvinced of the long-term viability of selling data as a business model. But if you want to find a way for authors to make money, don't make it even harder by trying to defend these dinosaurs at the same time.

Comments

[satyrblade.livejournal.com]

Actually, there's a sound physiological reason behind graphic design:

The human eye registers monotony when confronted with large masses of unbroken text or similar images. The human mind becomes fatigued after too much monotony. The human body experiences physical fatigue when spending large amounts of time with mental monotony. The human mind processes information more slowly and with a greater chance of error when bored and fatigued.

A well-done graphic design does more than just make pretty pictures. It also allows for higher degrees of mental processing, stimulates greater interaction between alpha and beta-wave brain activity (cf. biologist Leonard Shlain's book The Alphabet Verses the Goddess), and facilitates more interaction between the physical body and the active mind. This, in turn, promotes greater attention to, and retention of, the material involved.

BAD graphic design, on the other hand, actively causes mental and physical fatigue, either through boredom, confusion, or both.

"Aesthetics" involves more than just an emotional response (although such responses themselves are physiological in nature); when understood and properly applied, the art-science of aesthetics actively helps the human animal/ machine function more effectively.

And - as with writing - the skills, knowledge, insight and experience that separate a good graphic designer from a bad one are taught, learned and promoted in a professional environment.