Respect the Work: Republishing Books in the Public Domain - Paperback

by Barbara A. B. Seiders (Author)

Respect the Work describes shortcuts taken by publishers who seek to profit from the creative work of others without demonstrating respect for the original creative endeavor. Respect the Work was written in the hopes that readers will identify - and avoid - poor quality productions, and choose to support publishers who produce quality editions that honor original authors. Books in the public domain, no longer protected by copyright, can be published, modified -- and given away for free or sold -- by anyone. Organizations like Project Gutenberg digitize public domain books and make them freely available in a variety of formats. Commercial publishers can reproduce the books and offer them for sale. Publishers tend to fall in one of two categories: publishers who produce the books with the minimum possible investment, and publishers who invest in producing a quality reproduction worthy of the original creative work. Readers who value the creative effort of authors to produce books worth reading can choose whether to support organizations that make the works available for free or publishers who demonstrate respect for original authors, and thereby demonstrate that they Respect the Work.

Author Biography

With her bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College and a doctorate in Theoretical Quantum Chemistry from Duke University, Barbara Seiders was selected as a Diplomacy Fellow at the State Department, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her time as a AAAS Diplomacy Fellow proved to be the launch of a thirty-year career in the field of national and international security. In addition to the Department of State, Dr. Seiders worked for the United States Army, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security. She was privileged to serve as Science Advisor to Ambassador James Goodby, as an expert consultant on multiple occasions to the United Nations Secretary General, and as part of a global security project working directly with former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Currently, she is Principal at One Hundred Year Horizons, a company she started, to help shape future practices of leadership through consulting, training, writing, and publishing.