Publishers/Discussion

Robert Jasiek:

• According to Wikipedia, "Publishing is the dissemination of literature, music, or information.[1] It is the activity of making information available to the general public. In some cases, authors may be their own publishers, meaning originators and developers of content also provide media to deliver and display their content. Also, the word "publisher" can refer both to an individual who leads a publishing company or an imprint and to an individual who owns/heads a magazine." Therefore, self-publishers are publishers.

• According to Dictionary.com, publisher is "a person or company whose business is the publishing of books, periodicals, engravings, computer software, etc.". A self-publisher of books is a person or company whose business is the publishing of books. Therefore, self-publishers are publishers.

• According to Cambridge Dictionary, third definition of publisher, "a person or company that produces and sells books, magazines, newspapers, software, etc.". A self-publisher of books is a person or company that produces and sells books. Therefore, self-publishers are publishers.

• According to Merriam-Webster, a publisher is "one that publishes something / especially : a person or corporation whose business is publishing". A self-publisher of books is one that publishes something and especially a person or corporation whose business is publishing. Therefore, self-publishers are publishers.

• As a self-publisher of go books, my business as a Publizist (publisher) is registered with the German state. Therefore, I am an example of a self-publisher being a publisher.

• The word self-publisher includes the word publisher because self-publisher is a type of publishers. There are publishers that are self-publishers, publishers that are not self-publishers, publishers that are both self-publishers and publishers of media of other authors etc.

In conclusion, a self-publisher of books is both a publisher AND an author.

Since self-publishers are publishers as proved above, they belong to the parent page. Furthermore, the purpose of Sensei's Library is to provide information - it is not to hide information.

Alternative

Anonymous: The problem with equating self publishers with publishers here is that it creates a potential explosion in what can be listed. Publishers was there to list Go Book Publishing Companies. If you change that to mean anyone or thing that published something about Go, there is really no limit to what you can work into the page.

Look at https://www.amazon.com/Three-Stone-Games-Guo-Bailing/dp/1494809559 and you will see that the publisher is listed as "Create Space Independent Publishing Platform". A publishing company which offers self publishing allows authors to publish any old tat they like so long as they cough up the money for doing so.

I would prefer a new page with a list of self published books.

Else we can start to add everything in here, like UsagisBooks

RobertJasiek: I see what you are afraid of.

Matters are a bit complicated. Some publishers perceived as likely to be companies have also self-published something: a) Yutopian / Sidney Yuan / Go Winds journal, b) Brett und Stein Verlag (sounds like a company but I do not know if it is registered as some) / Gunnar Dickfeld / some German beginner books. Maybe there are more such publishers.

There might be many Asian go book publishing companies or self-publishers, recently apparently an increasing number with English texts / translations. However, we cannot easily criticise translations because Ishi Press, Yutopian, Slate&Shell have also published many translations.

The page title Publisher is liberal and should include everything. A different page Publishing Companies might also exist but - verifying which is a registered company and which just carries some publishing word in the advertising name can be hard. Yet another page might be for Self Publishers. Yet another for authors.

Rather I think that currently we do not have a page size problem because the page does not list too many publishers.

There is also a variety in quality of contents from books newly written after months to years of work to simple translation of old books now out of copyright. If the latter flood us some time, we can then still put them to an extra page. Please do not confuse them with my books, which belong to the former. What some others publishers do (modern book translations) might sometimes also require months of negotiation work so is appreciated.

Let us be tolerant as long as we can. If the list of publishers becomes longer than the list of English go books, we can reconsider things.