Publishers hate you. You should hate them back.

“ As if you couldn’t tell by the title, this is going to be a rant. You have been warned... When Taylor & Francis introduces free author eprints by saying, ‘Your friends and contacts can now read your published articles for free. The introduction of Taylor & Francis Online author eprints enables all authors to quickly and easily share links to the electronic version of their articles,’ what they are really saying is ‘we hate you for emailing copies of your own work to people, and want you to use our system of artificial scarcity instead.’ They go on to say that, ‘Up to 50 people will be able to access each paper for free. One of the 50 eprints is for you (you will always have free access to your articles), and the other 49 eprints are for sharing.’ Really? One of the free eprints is for me? THAT IS SO GENEROUS... HarperCollins fired LJ Smith from her own book series, The Vampire Diaries. Apparently it was work for hire, so, yes, she should have read and understood the contract. But back in 1990 when she signed the contract, it wasn’t yet clear that HarperCollns hates its authors and readers, I suppose. At least in academic writing we don’t have to worry about such silliness, since academic writing isn’t work for hire. I mean, unless it’s for Oxford. Because Oxford University Press hates its authors, it seems... So library-types, let’s get our story straight. Publishers have contempt for the authors they need to write works, and the readers they need to read works...”