{"id":4085,"date":"2017-12-10T23:36:23","date_gmt":"2017-12-10T23:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/potbanks.wordpress.com\/?p=4085"},"modified":"2017-12-10T23:36:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-10T23:36:23","slug":"tolkien-studies-14-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/2017\/12\/10\/tolkien-studies-14-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Tolkien Studies #14 (2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new edition of the leading journal Tolkien Studies<\/em> (Volume 14, 2017)<\/a> appears to be available now at Project MUSE. Not that I’d be able to tell, as it’s pay-walled there. Scholars outside academia and outside the USA have to pony up $70<\/a> for a paperback version. $70!<\/p>\n

Why is there no ebook version, on Amazon? The editors might be able to make more profit that way, according to my back-of-the-envelope sums. Let’s say they sell 1,000 copies of the $50-$70 paperback and make $38 a copy after printing and overheads. That’s $38,000 profit in maybe 18 months of sales. Let’s say that West Virginia University Press takes a 35% publisher’s cut, thus leaving the editors with about $25k per issue.<\/p>\n

But if there was an $8.95 Amazon-delivered ebook giving $6 profit per book, after Amazon’s modest cut, and it sold 5,000 copies (because it was on Amazon, and so cheap and accessible in digital form) then that would give $30k profit in 18 months or so.<\/p>\n

Anyway…. the highlights of the issue, for those not interested in the invented languages, are:<\/p>\n

* The Mystical Philology of J.R.R. Tolkien and Sir Israel Gollancz: Monsters and Critics<\/a>. (Update: found in Open Access)
\n* Visualizing the Word: Tolkien as Artist and Writer. [Update: found a summary on the author’s blog<\/a>]
\n* The Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies 2014. (The usual lengthy and authoritative survey review)<\/p>\n

Project MUSE does at least have the first page of each of these, for free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new edition of the leading journal Tolkien Studies (Volume 14, 2017) appears to be available now at Project MUSE. Not that I’d be able to tell, as it’s pay-walled there. Scholars outside academia and outside the USA have to pony up $70 for a paperback version. $70! Why is there no ebook version, on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tolkien-gleanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/spyders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}