Timeline for Springer GTM Reprints in China?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
17 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 23, 2015 at 5:13 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | @KConrad I meant non-Springer books. Strangely enough Springer does not have any discounted reprints in Singapore. | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 16:54 | comment | added | Lubin | So, if this is an accurate description of the situation, @kjetilbhalvorsen, the original student seller (and to a much lesser extent, all the later sellers) are in effect stealing from the authors the legitimate fruits of their labor. | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 8:13 | comment | added | kjetil b halvorsen | I have bought books on the internet from used books stores, and received such, apparently new, yellow books with chinese signs of them. Must be an extra income source for chinese students ... | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 7:35 | answer | added | Martin Peters | timeline score: 15 | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 4:45 | comment | added | Gordon Royle | Just to add to the general line of comments: my GTM book with Chris Godsil has a Chinese version, produced by Springer, with Chinese text on the outside and the original text on thin low-quality paper on the inside. Of course this does not mean that most, or even any, others are legitimate. | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 2:19 | comment | added | Joe Silverman | ...in their right mind publishes books at this level with the idea of making large sums of money. One wants them widely distributed and used (and hopefully appreciated) by students and colleagues. Of course, it is also a lot of work writing a book, so I'm not going to object to receiving a couple of dollars for each one sold in the US or Europe. | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 2:16 | comment | added | Joe Silverman | I've had a number of my Springer books published in China just as several people have described. This is done via some sort of agreement that Springer has with some Chinese publisher, I guess. They do indeed appear to be cheaply constructed (as per Keith's comment) and contain the "for sale...only" as he says. So they are certainly being legally published in China. I get a few free copies, and there is actually a very small royalty payment, on the order of a few cents per copy, which Springer keeps half of and gives the other half to the author. OTOH, no one ... | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 1:52 | comment | added | Kimball | @KConrad How do you know they are totally legit? My impression is that some books are and some aren't. I've bought things like CDs from Chinese stores that afterwards seemed to be illegal copies. | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 0:51 | comment | added | KConrad | @DimaPasechnik, the line is not "Not for sale in..." but rather "... for sale in the Mainland China only and not for export therefrom." Hmm, not surprised it has an English error, like the chopstick instructions. | |
| Aug 20, 2015 at 0:44 | comment | added | KConrad | When I was in Beijing I found a bookstore near my hotel with a lot of these Springer books (Chinese writing added to front cover, English unchanged). It is totally legit. The copy of Griffiths & Harris I saw had the table of contents in Chinese, but other English math books did not translate that part. When I returned to the US I was advised by several Chinese people that the books easily fall apart under regular use, so I have treated mine extra carefully. | |
| Aug 19, 2015 at 23:45 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | Well, it's very usual to see these "Not for sale in ..." printed in bold on first pages of textbooks. E.g. there are lots of such books on sale in Singapore at a big discount (e.g. "baby Rudin" for 12$US). | |
| Aug 19, 2015 at 23:41 | comment | added | Theo Johnson-Freyd | There have been high profile court cases about importing Chinese printings into USA (for resale). Unfortunately, I do not recall the results. Until DMCA, though, the basic rule was that if you legally came to own a book, then that book was yours, and you could do whatever you wanted with it physically, although you could not, by default, produce copies. | |
| Aug 19, 2015 at 23:39 | comment | added | paul garrett | @DimaPasechnik, I'm not sure that the copyright thang is really true, although I've heard it myself. By this point, I think it's that <large international corporation> wants to persuade people to not disrupt it's practices... not illegal practices, but, um, profitable-unless-disrupted. I've had a textbook of mine (foolishly giving away the copyright in the 90s...) translated and printed in Chinese in China, and, amazingly, that version only costs maybe a buck or two, while the U.S. version cost nearly 100 bux. "Go figger..." | |
| Aug 19, 2015 at 23:24 | comment | added | Dima Pasechnik | My understanding is that they are legitimate reprints of Springer books, but they cannot be sold outside of PRC for copyright reasons. On my visit to Shanghai I bought a bag of such GTMs in a local bookshop :-) | |
| Aug 19, 2015 at 23:07 | review | First posts | |||
| Aug 19, 2015 at 23:37 | |||||
| Aug 19, 2015 at 23:07 | comment | added | paul garrett | Such things have existed since at least the 1980s: the pricing of books in India and China "had to" make them vastly cheaper, given currency exchange and local economic conditions), or Springer (et al) could not sell any at all. No, they did not sell anything at a loss, or... why bother? The point is that the "Western" market could then (and still now) bear much bigger mark-ups (over cost of production), and has precedents for believing that it's ok, or ... something. | |
| Aug 19, 2015 at 23:02 | history | asked | TJP | CC BY-SA 3.0 |