Publications: Knowledge - Business 2

Publications - Knowledge - Business 1 continued...

This attitude of the publishing companies tells us that it has become a very good business like the pharmaceutical industry. One of the flourishing and money making businesses is the pharmaceutical industry which claims to the safeguard the health of the people and makes money. Publication has become an unavoidable business in capitalistic societies. When societies were warring societies the business was, let us assume that it was certainly – iron tools. When the societies were civilized, the costliest business still is something connected with ammunitions, but they have become all the more become business behind the scenes. Every country spends millions of dollars on the buying, ammunition, maintaining its mechanisms for the military. But it has become business among the states – the governments. They either sell them or create opportunities that the buyer may continue to buy ammunition from them etc. This leaves the citizens of the country to deal with other business that does not involve the bullets, missiles, bombs. Because physical power is not considered to be worthy in civilized societies, we think of another power, a worthy power that one can attain – ‘Knowledge is Power.’

Once one cannot use any more nuclear bombs, no markets can have profit over it. If it creates other ways of using it then it can have life. Hence apart from the military then one could think of the atomic power energy etc. The same idea is found among the publications. One makes it a business. Once physical power is replaced by the intellectual power what do we do? We want to establish that we are more talented in writing. Some use argumentative skills like the soldiers using the sword. Some use the guns to destroy the whole arguments and some use the bombs in order to destroy the whole school of thought. We have different schools of thought, different philosophers, some followers of philosophers, followers of followers, and everyone thinks that we have the final word on the issues and probles of the human world. the universities, the grades, researches augment the writing and publishing… it has become impossible to have a comprehensive view not on a very big issue but a very narrow and particular issue as well.

We have millions and millions of books – thousands and thousands of publications.  Whether we have elevated ourselves from the warring societies to peace loving societies or not, but what we can say is that the publications established themselves as unavoidable profit making firms. One example to show that this is a business and only a ‘business’ one can think of the e-books. The cost of the e-books should be less compared to printing books. If the cost of printing is included in selling the printed books, the e-books should cost less compared to the printed books. But one can check the price list and see the difference between the e-book and the printed book is almost nothing. The printed book and the e-book are the same. I am not ready to believe that the publishers do not include the cost of the printing in selling the printed books and therefore the price of the e-books are the original price of a book.

Think of another example: If one wishes to buy a single article published in a journal – to download an article from the publishers, one pays minimum twenty dollars, sometimes thirty, while the price of the whole printed journal may be less than that.  Let the publishers flourish, the book sellers grow, because knowledge is power and the publishers help to grow in knowledge. By only seeing the number of books available on a particular subject I am only reminded of my ignorance… everybody is ignorant – some learned ignorant – some specialist ignorant –.

What are books if not profit making?