Like I said, I enjoy a good curmudgeonly rant. Stephen Few has not been having a good couple of months with publishers.
When I fell in love with words as a young man, I developed a respect for publishers that was born mostly of fantasy. I imagined venerable institutions filled with people of great intellect, integrity, and respect for ideas. I’m sure many people who fit this description still work for publishers, but my personal experience has mostly involved those who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag and apparently have no desire to try.
Said most recent experience involves a bait and switch by Taylor & Francis (the publisher) on rights to some material Few was providing to an academic journal. Guy goes out of his way to put something together, I’m sure of high quality, and they want to reserve the right to modify his work. After they agreed in principle to his terms.
Something similar happened to Danah Boyd and I notice a pattern. Good intentioned journal editor from academia agrees to reasonable terms from fellow academic. Publisher waits until last minute to pull the okee-doke “Well, we can’t really do that. If you don’t agree to our onerous terms we’ll have to pull your article.” If these guys didn’t have their hooks so tightly intertwined with the tenure process, this behavior would be so over.