[MD] Review of 'The Truth About Art'.

[Ant McWatt]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2014 at 7:48 AM, ARLO JAMES BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu> wrote:

[DMB]

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/the-truth-about-art-reclaiming-quality-by-patrick-doorly/2016268.article

The reviewer finds things to criticize and things to praise about Patrick Doorly's book. (Any press is good press?)

[Arlo]
"The book is printed on low-quality paper with dense text in double columns, which do not make for pleasant reading." Ouch.

Dan Glover stated October 19th 2014:


[Dan]
If I had purchased a book "printed on low-quality paper with dense
text in double columns" I would have promptly sent it back for a
refund. Not only is this information the reader needs to know before
they buy the book (there is no free preview available on Amazon as
most books have) but it is something that can (probably) be remedied
in the next edition. This is constructive criticism... something the
author can use to improve his work.
 
I have published a number of print books using CreateSpace, a division
of Amazon... basically a POD (print on demand) publishing house. The
prices for customers are reasonable (there is no cost to me as the
publisher), the quality is there (paper-wise as well as the
illustrations), and I have the ability to go back any time and make
changes should I deem them necessary. The point is, there are options
out there so that an author does not have to settle for low quality,
especially when his book is about reclaiming quality!
 
Ant McWatt comments:

Dan, all,

Remember that Patrick Doorly (the author of TTAA) was primarily aiming his book towards an academic audience (I guess fine art critics and philosophers mainly) so a vanity publisher such as CreateSpace (whose academic credibility is basically zero) was not an option open to him.  It's the finely honed arguments in Patrick's book which give it, its intellectual quality and its these arguments that I ask the reader of this post to be primarily concerned with. 

Different horses for different courses I guess... Maybe Patrick and/or his publisher will arrange to have a deluxe version of TTAA published one day (on high quality paper with full colo(u)r photographs; etc.) but (without editing the main body of text) this would still be a very expensive purchase.  For instance, check out Genesis Publications (who publish gorgeously hand crafted books) whose books often sell for £500/$850 plus:

http://www.genesis-publications.com/book/i-me-mine-george-harrison/deluxe

You also have to remember that Patrick is very much a pioneer (certainly as the UK is concerned) and things can only improve in this regard (hopefully!!!).

Best wishes,

Ant


http://moq.robertpirsig.org/Doorly.html


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