So, What Kind of Stuff Do You Write?

(thanks to deep-focus.com)

This summer has been one of writing and most of all, rewriting. Draft after draft, constantly seeking constructive praise--who wants criticism? But constructive criticism is what I got, which is more than the faux-Blair above and his writer received.

Given that I'm still alive and the criticism was good, I have put the final drafts of two papers on SSRN for download.

The first is "Transnational Lawyering: Clients, Ethics and Regulation" in Lawyers in Practice: Ethical Decision Making in Context, Lynn Mather and Leslie Levin, eds., University of Chicago Press, 2011.

The second is "The Re-Landscaping of the Legal Profession: Large Law Firms and Professional Re-Regulation" Current Sociology, vol 59 (4) 2011.

Amongst other things, I am now in the throes of revising my PhD dissertation from some time ago for Alan Childress' new series of Classic Dissertations for Quid Pro Books. For more on this venture see here.


Summer is turning into a busy Fall.


PS. I'm reading a certain politician's memoir--see above again--and it's not very good, rather gushing and over-earnest. If you can find a remaindered copy it might be worth buying.

So, What Kind of Stuff Do You Write?

Law Publishing is Changing and Moving into the 21st Century

(Thanks to David Restorick)



The Ark Booktower above was part of an exhibition of small spaces at the Victoria and Albert Museum this summer. I especially liked this one which was a booktower, enclosed by books with occasional seats at different levels, so one could stop and browse. If I had one I would never leave it.

I mention this because I have juist been reading an interview with Alan Childress of Tulane Law School in Law Librarian Blog: Part One and Part Two. (And HT to Legal Blog Watch.)

Alan has started a new publishing venture that I've mentioned before, called Quid Pro Books. It's based on publishing primarily in eBook formats (many of them) as well as print when needed. As a long time user of Kindle, Alan could see the benefits for scholars and students in using these formats over print.

Two main lines to his venture are republishing lost classics and bringing PhD dissertations to market quickly. The discussion of Holmes' The Common Law illustrates what Alan is doing:

Joe Hodnicki: That brings us back to your just released corrected and annotated edition of Holmes' The Common Law, which, to remind readers, can be acquired directly from Quid Pro Books and on Amazon in print and Kindle editions.
Alan Childress: I am actually proud of what I did there, and not just did for others. The Annotated Common Law is a new book that I believe will become a standard in every library or prelaw-student’s gift basket. I took a great book and decoded it with some 200 notes. All Holmes’ historians remark what a “difficult” read it is. Not really, if you just explain some basics to readers as they go, like “case” is a writ and what a writ is, or translate Latin and Greek. Some of his speech patterns are quite old but sound like my Southern uncles—in fact my ancestors may have shot Holmes. I think I deciphered him well and I explain legal terms, like chattels and bailments, for nonlawyers. I’m surprised no one did this before. Plus again with the proper footnoting, nice presentation on the page, true page numbers, etc.  Its value in digital is simpler: every previous digital form of the book traced back to a poor scan which left out words from the margins and had him saying modem and docs. Holmes is hard enough without guessing his every eighth word.

And most recently, Alan has published my colleague's, Lisa Webley, book, Adversarialism and Consensus? The Profession's Construction of Solicitor and Family Mediator Identity and Role. I will write about this more anon.

But do read the interview. It's full of interesting titbits as well as informing us about the future of legal publishing.

Law Publishing is Changing and Moving into the 21st Century

Soaring e-book sales speak volumes

(thanks to Robin Good)

PETER BRIEGER | HONG KONG - Aug 01 2010 06:58

After years of lurking in the literary wilderness, the e-book market has exploded with online retailer Amazon.com's digital volumes recently overtaking sales of their hardcover counterparts.

The increase in sales has come as Amazon slashes the price on its Kindle device amid heavy competition from Apple's multipurpose iPad and e-readers from Sony and bookstore giant Barnes & Noble.

Underscoring the growth, Hong Kong's massive book fair, an annual event attended by almost one million people, wrapped up last week with visitors exposed to a brand-new section: digital reading.

Beijing-based Hanvon Technology unveiled a black-and-white tablet reader that comes with 5 000 Chinese and English book titles pre-installed for about $440.

Readers can download thousands more titles for as little as HK$20 each on the device, which also lets users enlarge the typeface, take notes and look up words in the dictionary.

"One [print] book might cost you HK$100 or more, and then you have to find a place to store it," said Hanvon employee Bo Bo Wong. "With this, you can have thousands and thousands of books in one place," she said.

Mainland companies such as Hanvon, Acuce and Tianjin are taking on the likes of Apple and Amazon by pushing content tailor-made for the vast and rapidly growing Chinese digital market.

The total value of digital publications across all platforms overtook that of traditional print publications in mainland China for the first time last year, the General Administration of Press and Publication said last week.

According to the South China Morning Post, a recent survey by the Chinese Institute of Publishing Science found that nearly a quarter of the 20 000-plus people it surveyed now do most of their reading digitally.

The newspaper quoted Chen Fuming, a manager of a major bookstore chain in Guangzhou across the border from Hong Kong, as saying Chinese book shops were in crisis.

"Even I myself now prefer to read fiction with my mobile phone," Chen said. "It's cheap and convenient."

New Zealand's Kiwa International, another company showing off its wares at the Hong Kong book fair, is using Apple's iPad as a platform for its child-targeted software.

The Auckland firm's technology lets children interact with books downloaded on to the iPad by colouring in story characters and swiping words that are then repeated aloud -- in nine languages.

"They can totally personalise the book," said Kiwa's creative director Derek Judge. "And we provide a service to [traditional] publishers who want to enter into the digital arena."

Amazon temporarily sold out of its $189 Kindle e-reader last week and on Thursday unveiled a new 1$39 model that connects online by WiFi instead of via 3G networks.

"Amazon.com customers now purchase more Kindle books than hardcover books -- astonishing when you consider that we've been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months," Amazon boss Jeff Bezos said last month.

US bookstore chain Borders has also launched an electronic book store to tap into the market, which has seen late Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson become the first novelist to sell more than one million e-books on Amazon.com. - AFP 

(thanks to www.mg.co.za/article/2010-08-01-soaring-ebook-sales-speak-volumes) 

Soaring e-book sales speak volumes

Great New Law and Society Publishing Venture

 (available at Amazon)

Alan Childress of Tulane Law School has set up a new publishing house of great interest to law and society scholars as well as others. Alan posted in Legal Profession Blog:

As a follow-up to my post yesterday on republishing the Kadish & Kadish classic and others as a Kindle book or an ebook, I announce more generally that I seek submissions to publish digitally your still-relevant dissertation or monograph-length thesis.  This is to post on Amazon and other sites for use on iPad, Kindle, and Nook, and related apps on PC, Mac, iPhone, and BlackBerry.  The fields are legal ethics, law, law and society, and legal history or biography. This would not be an SSRN-type download but instead would be marketed as a regular Kindle book and the like and available to a broader international market, easily searched on Amazon, Google, and Barnes and Noble sites. 

This is unlike some digital-dissertation services that essentially make it a vanity press by having it as a download from their site; my goal is to turn it into a real book, for use with readers and researchers through real channels and read by every device, with working links and footnotes. (And also unlike those sites, my royalty rate is much higher, and your book will accompany not only other dissertations but classic works in law and society, brought back digitally.)  Eventually they will also be featured on this website, but mainly on Amazon and iBooks.  Editing services are available for outsourcing at good rates (with legal writing professors!), but I will do all production, formatting, and marketing.

This service is not exclusive, in the sense that you are free to submit your work elsewhere in the meantime and pull it from this program should it be accepted by Penn Press or OUP ("making it to the show"), or for whatever reason; I'd facilitate that. This is exclusively digital publishing and is not meant to interfere with your parsing parts of it for articles (even to SSRN) or your seeking traditional publication of the whole.  Contact me at this email address with topic, description, and the history of your manuscript, and the goals you have for it, if interested. The imprint, as with the book above, would be with Quid Pro, these in a Dissertation Series or by subject matter, e.g., Legal Ethics. There is also an option of taking a reduced rate but funding a nonprofit law student project, which incentivizes a Facebooky student salesforce for you so it would seem to be the smart move.

Alan is about to revive some of the law and society classics by Selznick, Auerbach, Skolnick, and Messenger. Alan got his Ph.D from Berkeley--you can tell. And the picture at the top is from a new book he's published on Amazon.

Quid Pro Books is here and you can email Alan at quidprolaw@gmail.com.

Alan is doing a great job on this and I can think of quite a few Ph.Ds lying around that could usefully be published here. Do it.

Great New Law and Society Publishing Venture