Theos-Talk Archives (February 2011 Message tt00073)

Thanks for the info.

We will be seeing more of such innovations. In the text book industry, the
availability of scanners is going to hit the publishers real hard in days to
come. Students who are already facing mounting increase in fees can go and
get one copy and scan it and share it. While the ethics and legal issues may
be argued about, the reality usually supercedes everything.

In the theosophical world, the aim of publishing should be to further
disseminate theosophical teachings world-wide and making money should be
secondary.

With many books such as Hodson's Light of the Sanctuary going out of print,
should theosophical students be starved of access?

In the past, the incident that comes to my mind is the famous book by Ernest
Wood - Is this theosophy? which was extremely rare to find any theosophical
library. Now it can be accessed free of charge on-line.

Let us all wait and see how the battle between traditional publishing and
digital revolution turns out.

MKR




On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Jayananda Hiranandani <
professorjaya@Mk9-3mROnfJ_62RtJi5bNFMzW6hR6FZLM5HuyWW_LlPdUAw-3nu2csENFNCx8jD-hm16diGDc1QUCPiTAN4.yahoo.invalid> wrote:

>
>
> Dear MKR:
>
> Many thanks for the message appended below.
>
> In my professional work of teaching engineering, I found that, at least one
> case and likely many more, there is the boxed shipment of a book and its
> electronic download on the Internet. the latter is about half the price of
> the former. This is a way of publishing and is likely to find more use in
> many more fields.
>
> Thanking you,
> Yours cordially,
> Jayananda H. Hiranandnai
>
> --- On Wed, 2/16/11, MKR <mkr777@HVsh0IPPtgXHnGaB9DCmUUekrugIHGu_VmSk1lPTvnWBSopU7aRyxCbNteiRMjdeY3mheNdOlhIs.yahoo.invalid> wrote:
>
> From: MKR <mkr777@HVsh0IPPtgXHnGaB9DCmUUekrugIHGu_VmSk1lPTvnWBSopU7aRyxCbNteiRMjdeY3mheNdOlhIs.yahoo.invalid>
> Subject: theos-talk Digital Revolution and Book Publishing & Selling
> To: "theos-talk" <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Wednesday, February 16, 2011, 6:29 AM
>
>
>
>
> Borders, the well known book store in the USA has filed for bankruptcy.
>
> Read the newsreport here:
>
> <http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110216-708363.html>
>
> Brick-and-mortar booksellers like Borders, second in size only to Barnes &
> Noble Inc. (BKS), have battled competition from Internet-only retailers
> such
> as Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and the advent of digital books and e-readers.
>
> Whether one likes it or not, digital revolution coupled with Internet is
> delivering a knockout to traditional publishers and booksellers. This is
> all
> the more so with niche publishers such as TPH, whose main objective is not
> to make money, but to spread its message.
>
> From what we have seen in the recent years, theosophical publishers are a
> sitting duck unaware of what is going on in the market. All it needs is to
> look at the pricey HPB Commentaries, Joyâs Commentaries on Mahatma Letters,
> the Judge Case book from Canada, two volume Hodsonâs collected works and
> the
> out of print Hodsonâs Light of the Sanctuary which is selling as high as
> US$600.00.
>
> Theosophical publishers should jump on the digital revolution or else the
> revolution would take over and we may see them folding their publishing
> business in the next decade.
>
> MKR
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>  
>


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