Correct me if I am wrong, but these “5” appear to have no serials at all. Why trust serials so much…

Perhaps we could use Google Earth to see if we can spot aircraft. I recall once seeing an F-14 on the side of a runway, and an F-4 taking off, shortly after reading by one American “expert” that Iranian F-14s are not in flyable condition.

How is it we can swallow Chinese HUD and avionics without any evidence at all other than a link to an Iranian forum? We need a uniform standard to avoid bias…

If we are going to have a world in which the only new books are going to be those written by amateurs for the love of their subject, we are going to be much the poorer for it. Many of the aerospace books in my own library were written by professional authors who made a living by writing, and were released by publishers who sold enough copies to make the project profitable.

I tried an experiment last night of doing a google search using the name of the aviation book that I’ve just finished reading. The fourth and fifth ‘hits’ were links to pirated PDFs. So a question worth asking is – why are aviation enthusiasts prepared to steal books by downloading illegal PDFs?

As an amateur, I do a little bit of historical research in a non-aerospace field, in which I publish the occasional article. The standard reference work in this field was privately published by its author several years ago at a cover price of around £90. The book has proved popular, and sold as well as could be expected for a specialised title, but you would search in vain for a pirated PDF version. It was published for an enthusiast community that has proven to be honest and accepts that of you want to acquire the results of a man’s years of work, you should pay for it.

I was lucky. My books were written long before the age of the scanner. Most libraries will have sent them off the book sales long ago, or thrown them out. Only one long out-of-print title has suffered the fate of becoming an on-line PDF. But when people ask me when a badly-needed new edition is coming, I point out that given that the current edition is available free on-line, no-one is interested in commissioning an updated edition. That is the effect that the ‘guys with scanners’ are already having on book publishing. As an American friend once told me, “It’s going to get worse from here on in.”

My advice to PLA-MKII would be only to tackle his proposed JF-17 book is he has another source of income and does need to achieve a decent financial return for his efforts. To my mind, the only sensible way of getting a career that involves writing about aerospace and defence is to work for open-source intelligence companies such as Jane’s or Stratfor, which ‘narrowcast’ from behind a paywall. That is probably the only route that will keep an author’s work out of the clutches of the ‘guys with scanners’. But the downsides are being an employee, and the fact that your work will reach only a small professional audience, so you will receive no public recognition.

Thanks Mercurius, I always read your posts with a great deal of interest, and very often double read them. I’m actually into quite a bit of historical research from my professional side – I’m about to finish a PhD in Islamic Studies – Islamic Civilization and Current Issues. Basically, What is wrong and how to fix that we Muslims were once superpowers and have gone bust somewhere down the line. So I’m coming from the opposite side to yours – historical / philosophical / sociological / religious research being my profession while military aviation being a side hobby (and one of many at that).

I started off on military aviation quite young, reading JDW and othe publications from the age of 12. By 15 I had already published something in a national newspaper’s military supplement. But military aviation has always been a hobby and nothing really professional i.e. income generating.

While you’ve pointed out how copyright issues have really dampened the traditional publishing business, there has been another revolution in POD (print on demand) publishing that allows people like myself the opportunity to publish and reach a global audience. I think the future lies in less professional authors and more part-timers like myself using POD, while the major texts are maintained by traditional publishers.

Publishing is rapidly changing, both in nature and scope. POD publishing allowed me to reach a global audience with my first book. To the extent that my book was available for purchase from major online sellers and worldwide. More recently, I’ve also tried my hand at online publishing, and that’s even cheaper (can be free) but you can’t make much or any real money out of it.

The worldview is kind of changing, people used to publish to make money, now people publish to share ideas. That’s primarily why I publish in any case, so it works out well, at least for online publishing. POD however costs money (much less than traditional publishing but) still enough that you’d worry about your book turning up on pdf too soon.