FAQ

What do you mean by accessibility?

Why do you keep talking about pamphlets?

Who owns the copyright of your essays?

Do authors earn royalties?

Are you part of the Open Access movement?

What is your production model?

What if I want a book on your website but have no money?

How do you cover your production costs?

Do you publish in other languages than English?

What is a Creative Commons (cc) license?

Can I obtain a print copy of a book?

How can I help Rounded Globe establish an amazing free library of high quality scholarly eBooks?

What do you mean by accessibility?

We distinguish between three forms of scholarly accessibility: public, vertical, and horizontal. Public means anyone can access the research; a vision we share with the wider open access movement. Vertical means any interested layperson can understand the writing. Horizontal means any scholar in another field should find it intelligible. Vertical and horizontal accessibility are two sides of the same coin, but we distinguish between them in order to emphasize two distinct Rounded Globe goals: bringing great scholarship out of the universities to the attention of a wider audience (vertical) and generating the conditions of true interdisciplinary conversation between different fields of knowledge (horizontal).

Why do you keep talking about pamphlets?

The move to electronic books liberates authors from the traditional constraints of the article and monograph. We will consider monographs but it seems to us that a pamphlet is about the right size for a scholarly essay, and that most published academic books consist of about two-thirds padding. We are mindful of the revolutionary role that the pamphlet has played in the history of the modern world.

Who owns the copyright of your essays?

Authors retain copyright of their work.

Do authors earn royalties?

Authors own their electronic book files and may do with them as they wish. We encourage all our authors to upload their work to our Rounded Globe web page, where readers may donate and download. But we also encourage authors to upload their files to retail outlets like Amazon and receive royalty payments. Of course, authors receive no royalties for copies of their work shared for free by way of systems like BitTorrent.

It has been argued that "pirating" increases royalties by way of increased publicity. This may be so, but at the end of the day an author chooses to publish with Rounded Globe because of a desire to reach wide audiences (many of whom would be otherwise precluded from access to serious scholarship).

Are you part of the Open Access movement?

We already answered that in passing in the first FAQ above. But from another perspective: we are certainly doing something similar. However, we are distinct from most Open Access initiatives, which tend to be undertaken by people within the academic system who believe that research should be available to all. This is all well and good. But we operate outside the universities and find most research indigestible. Rather than campaigning to make all publications in the humanities public we work to put the best of it into circulation and to draw it into a wider conversation.

What is your production model?

We separate production from ownership and profits. Technically speaking, Rounded Globe is simply a production outfit that transforms manuscripts into ebooks. If we select the work of an author, we perform this production service for free on condition that the author publishes the work on a CC license. How authors then distribute their work is up to them - while we encourage them to upload to our Rounded Globe website they may choose instead, or in addition, to sell their work via retail outlets such as Amazon, or even to distribute for free by way of (say) a torrent site such as The Pirate Bay.

What if I want a book on your website but have no money?

We do not sell books. But we certainly believe that our books command value; they have taken time and effort and love and care to produce, and embody not only deep thought but also scholarly craft. We therefore suggest that you give a donation to the author via Stripe. Alternatively, you might consider donating instead to Rounded Globe production costs via our campaign page. If for some reason neither of these options are feasible we urge you to dedicate a decade to researching some subject of interest, write a substantial essay, and publish it with Rounded Globe. Alternatively, you could drop some coins in the hat of the next deserving street musician you encounter.

How do you cover your production costs?

Our production work is financed by a crowd-funding campaign.

Do you publish in other languages than English?

Not as yet. We would like to do so; but at present lack the resources. If you are willing and able to lend a hand on this please drop us a line.

What is a Creative Commons (cc) license?

Traditional copyright (c) comprises a bundle of rights. Hence the traditional "all rights reserved". A (cc) license allows for the differentiation of these rights, with the creator of a work choosing to reserve some but waive others.

We allow authors to choose between one of two (cc) licenses: CC BY-NC-ND, under which non-commercial file sharing is legal, but modification of the work or failure to acknowledge authorship is not; and (our preferred) CC BY-SA, under which a work can be shared, reused, and modified so long as credit is given to the original author.

Can I obtain a print copy of a book?

Rounded Globe provide mobi, epub, and PDF files and also generate an html web version of our essays. We are currently setting up a print on demand (POD) option that authors may make use of if they so wish.

How can I help Rounded Globe establish an amazing free library of high quality scholarly eBooks?

There are three obvious ways to get involved: donate, support, submit.