Tuesday 25 November 2008

Books and Authors

Stephen King's net worth is reputed to be somewhere in excess of $200 million. Yet whenever the subject of money is mentioned to anyone who has written a book on HEMA they never hesitate to tell you that they didn't do it for the money, in fact it cost them money to write it.

This makes me wonder.

If they are telling the truth and the royalties they get from the worldwide sales of their books really are so poor as to actually cost them money, why then did they bother writing it in the first place?

There must be a reason, it's just that I can't figure it out.

It can't be because they want to share their interpretation with the rest of us. HEMA is pretty unique in that it is, and always has been (at least for the last 15 years), closely linked to the internet. So sharing of information is a doddle. It can be acheived in seconds. One moment you are sat at home looking at a word document, the next you are sharing it with everyone in the world who cares to look.

So it's clearly not about money, and it's certainly not about the dissemination of information.

Surely it can't be something as base as respect? By publishing a book people will respect me? I find it hard to rule this one out even though I think it is very wrong indeed. I respect people who work hard, people who share their work and people who are open to changing their ideas in a truly scientific manner.

I don't have any respect for someone who sets out to stroke their own ego by hiding their interpretation inside a glossy cover and trying to force people to pay them to view it.

Perhaps it is simply the continuance of a longstanding tradition. The sources we study exist because they were written down, and so setting our own work down is simply following in the footsteps of those martial artists who came before us. However this doesn't hold water.

At least not quite.

If you want to set your interpretation down for everyone to see, to gain respect and to enter into the age old tradition that we are striving to be part of then open source is the way to go. It gets you work far more exposure than it would if you put it in a hard cover and set a price on it. You might not make it onto Amazon.com but if your work is any good then you will stimulate interest in yourself as a teacher. That way you really can start to make some money.

Not that many teachers earn as much as Stephen King.

So maybe it is about the money after all...