edu again 3934

I noted:

I should note the way to tell if people are Feynman groupies when you ask them or they ask you about his books is if they read Surely, What, Character, etc. You ask about "The Red Books" or "The Lectures" (i.e, How many volumes?).

Well. I'm a book review editor for a quarterly. Sales figures are regarded with some sensitively. They will always be puffed up. Presses (publishers) are look upon in various ways: mbutt media, vanity, etc. A number of books about the topic exist. There are publishing rags. Wiley, for instance, is the largest publisher of text books in the world. And 300 journals.

Technical books are peanuts. The real sellers are people whom industries are created on: remember the phrase: "The Giants, like Jacqueline Suzanne..." you could use Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Rowling. When Wiley buys a printing press, they expect it to last 70 years.

The way the publishing industry views text books, and technical books, they see what they do as a service to man-kind. Name your big press. Wiley, Elsevier (librarians can tell you about their reputation), Springer, N-H, P-H, etc. S&S, McGraw-Hill, etc. all various niches. If it doesn't sell, you can use vanity presses and publish yourself. Computing is generally pretty lucky. It is seen as generalizable to other fields. Scientists in many fields have page charges: they have to pay to get published, they don't get paid for wirting articles.

The all time best seller noted in the English speaking world tends to be the Bible. Selling makes no distinction who or why or whether they get read. You guys are lucky to see Amazon rankings.

I need to transscribe the English quote. It's in the 1st chap or preface of Sykes' book No Ordinary Genius. This is noted in Wikipedia, but attributed to Mark Kac. Sykes 2nd documentary shows Hans Bethe saying it, so I don't know why Kac is attributed otherwise I would change it.

I have to agree with what some people took as a spiteful comment by Murray Gell-Mann that Feynman created an aire about his stories (that he was wasting his time). But it wasn't spiteful, it was how he was. Others will know him far better from his clbuttes.

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