createspace is the worst PRINTER I have ever come across. There workmanship is way below the worst quality printing and its a waste of time and money. My advise is save yourself the time money and heartbreak. I wouldnot buy a book orinted by them now that I have seen their bad ethics and horrific printing job.

I have Just come the create space website and had to study the Sales section on who gets what. At this very moment Its quite a good deal. If a CD was sold at $10,you would get $4.45 Ive only just joined so perhaps its better now. Considering they print ,barcode, market and sell on your behalf is quite a good deal. For me at least now,gone are the times when you had to do all those things individually ,Like print, duplicate, market and sell CDs through not so public channels and also pay individually for those different services or( lucky enough to be signed up)Sod's law methinks. Ideally I would like the fixed cost to be lower, who knows maybe they will ,if the so call credit crunch thing really has had any effect on this area of industry. Yes folks it is a better deal! from the comfort of your home ,always up to date and easy to edit,upload,and have full control of your product. Forgive me If Ive overlooked over any thing ,I will have to get into the nitty gritty of Create Space,and write back. Haven't looked on the book writing side of things,but hope it gets better for you author chaps out there. Cheers

DrWex: Apropos of fonts and possible IP abuse: Check this out - a complaint by a leading font design studio against NBC: http://cityfile.com/dailyfile/7508 My orig source and some illuminating commentary here: http://typophile.com/node/62884 Cheers, Rich

previous commentor #2 Sean - fail. Google "BoingBoing's ISP based in Canada, DMCA". BoingBoing has had DMCA notices in the past.

previous commentor fail. Whois lookup reveals that the registered owner of boingboing.net is contactprivacy.com, which has a registered physical address in Canada. Previous commentor apparently isn't aware domain registrant anonymizer services. Lolz. Oh, he apparently doesn't know much about law either.

This whole thing is pretty lame and being blown out of proportion. I really am finding it distasteful that Boing Boing and their ISP is being heralded as heroic copy-fighters in this, frankly, dumb mess. The facts. Boing Boing is hosted in a country called Canada. The DMCA is a law created and enforceable in the United States of America. Freedom of Speech protections are not applicable in Canada. In Canada the closest legal "Free Speech" protection is "Freedom of Expression". Fair Use is _not_ a concept that applies in Canada. In Canada the closest legal "Fair Use" protection is "Fair Dealing". None of the legal hooey in the Boing Boing post matters or applies. The entire Boing Boing post is just as ridiculous as the legal firm who thought that it would make any sense to send the letter in the first place.

Whoa! Abney Park is friggin' fantastic! Never heard of them before. Many, many thanks.

Am I the only one who's noticed the exorbitant sign-up fees? The average CD sells for $10 (or less these days). They take $4.95 up front for each CD. Amazon takes 45% of the total $10, at $4.50 (which in effect becomes 90% of the remaining $5 after the initial $4.95). So, let's say an indie artist actually sells a CD for $10 on Amazon. How much does the artist get? $0.50! Ouch!

I am not very smart about these copyright and copyfight but I believe if its mine then I need to protect it. It would be awful if I made something, expecting to earn from it then some random people just have a copy of it for free.

It just pushes to the forefront what teachers, teachers federations, and students have wanted forever. The use of technology is new, but the desired outcomes are the same things people have always wanted. Technology is a tool, like other teaching aides in the classroom.

The AIGA Link should be http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/symbol-signs

@dan I'm all for writing to standards. But we've still got some years to go before that becomes a reliable proposition. There is still way too much variation among browsers. I'm hopeful, though.

Even on intranets, tying it to a specific browser and platform is shortsighted; it could end up locking the site into an outdated platform even after it's long obsolete, or force your successor developers to spend a lot of time and effort upgrading it for forward compatibility later. I make a point of making all my sites (internal or external) non-platform-specific.

@DrWex "I would say the question is nonsense - the artist creates the painting and it's presented in a context with the proper technological support. Likewise, a Web page should be presented with the correct technological support." I happen to agree. Having to concern oneself with a concept like "graceful degradation" *is* nonsensical. But the web is a new medium. And lack of "proper technological support" seems to be the price we are (hopefully temporarily) paying for keeping things open and free and NOT under the control of one entity. When I did intranet work for a government agency some years ago, all I had to deal with was Internet Explorer 6 as a vehicle. No variables. No thoughts of "graceful degradation". I had complete control within the limits imposed by that one browser. And I, too, have wondered what Picasso's "Guernica" might look like gracefully degraded. (Hah!) Lastly - I've added a blogroll link and a mention in today's post at Readable Web. Let's keep at it, eh?

It's OK. The old adage about "all publicity is good; just make sure they spell your name right". The name used to be Wechselblatt anyway - long story. One final point on "graceful degredation": I think this highlights an inherent conflict between peoples' experiences of the Web as an information resource and designers' use of the Web as a medium for creative expression. What, for example, is the 'graceful degredation' of your experience viewing a painting on a museum wall, if someone was to use the wrong or no light to illuminate that painting? I would say the question is nonsense - the artist creates the painting and it's presented in a context with the proper technological support. Likewise, a Web page should be presented with the correct technological support.

Sorry, Wexelblat. One of my old chums from Brooklyn NY is named David Wechsler, who went on to become a very successful classical flute player with a major orchestra. Remarking to myself about the alternate spelling of "x" versus "chs" had him popping into my thoughts the other day and I blended his name with yours - Freud lives! BTW - I'm with Dan T as far as keeping "graceful degradation" firmly in mind.

Joe: I'm not sure I understand your charge of intellectual dishonesty. Since Copyfight is me these days (the other writers have long since moved on) I think I can be pretty definitive on what Copyfight's policies are. Those include a philosophy that DRM is bad and that alternatives should be promoted. What Typekit and its ilk are doing seems to be in line with that. As other commenters have noted, fonts exist in a weird legal gray space. Such spaces are inherently hostile to use because people like certainty. Whether it's the certainty of "if someone uses this, I'll get paid" or the certainty of "if someone uses this I won't get sued even though I'm not making a buck off it." To the degree that we can all agree on a regime for font reuse and sharing I think that's a positive. If Disney, or another member of the Cartel, was behind Typekit I would inherently be more suspicious because those entities have shown themselves willing to use every legal (and some extra-legal) means to lock up content. Veen is not just "some guy I went to college with" - he's a person who has been active on the Web for a couple decades and has a well-known public record that anyone who cares to search will be able to find. If Veen has cred, it's cred he's earned. Finally, Dan T points to a very important distinction, which I skirted in my original post: Web design vs The Web(tm). It's true that for the vast majority of Web content, the specific font used is irrelevant. But designers and artists create works in all media - including on the Web - that are intended to be experienced in specific ways. Typography is an important part of visual design, whether it's posters, CD covers, or (certain) Web pages. Part of the point of the CSS project is to allow designers much more compatibility and control within the open framework of HTML. I imagine an interior designer might get similarly upset if someone said "Well, we're not going to use those nice Aeron chairs you designed. We'll just give people flimsy plastic folding chairs. After all, a chair is a chair, right?" Oh and for those who care, my last name is "Wexelblat" not Wexler. Fun factoid: if you Google 'Wexelblat' every hit you get back is me or someone I'm one-step related to.

I'm of the school of thought that favors using logically structured, platform independent Web designs that don't break down miserably if they're displayed in the "wrong" font because a user is using a different browser, operating system, screen resolution, or set of user preferences than I expected. I'm also rather conservative in use of such problematic frills as non-ASCII characters (if I'm not writing in a language that requires them); inserting stuff like so-called "smart quotes" is a minefield of potential issues, as seen in the above comments by Joe Clark, where, at least in my browser (Firefox under Vista) the apostrophes come out as messy sequences of other characters.

@joe clark I think your last question is aimed more at the original post by Alan Wexler ("If Disney etc...") and whatever policy it is you perceive this site or Wexler advocates. Speaking for myself, I argue and advocate for none of the things you listed as simplistic either/or propositions. And if Disney were behind Typekit (lower case "k"), it might be good thing because the Typekit user interface would then probably feature all of those great Disney cartoon characters we've all come to know and love! Ciao, Rich

I think you’re evading the reasoning because you haven’t actually reasoned through it. If you’re a copyfighter, why are you not arguing for absolutely unfettered access to the cultural works we call typefaces? Why are you advocating watered-down copyright protection buttressed by hazy contract law? How is this in any respect different from defending DRM, for example? Don’t you actually want all cultural works freed from the shackles of copyright? Especially computer files, since they inhabit a digital world in which copying will never become more difficult? Aren’t font files just like MP3 files? Have you even thought of any of these contradictions? If Disney were behind TypeKit instead of a guy you went to college with, wouldn’t you be full-bore against it?

@joe clark Joe, I'm not quite following your reasoning here. If there is no copyright protection, why would anyone bother with a licensing contract? What rights am I licensing? Just lend me your font collection, please, and that's the end of it. Yes, I know fonts exist in a kind of legal netherworld because typefaces can't be copyrighted but yet font designers contend that fonts are full copyrightable software products. (This is one part about Fonts that makes it interesting legally.) I do know that "fonts-are-software" has been tested in court at least once. I don't have the name of the case but it was brought by Adobe. Thomas Phinney who used to be with Adobe but is now with Extensis would be able to tell you the case. Adobe won. But like most cases of this nature, it's hardly a sweeping precedent.

You're quite welcome, DrWex. I've subscribed via RSS to Copyfight for some time and have always been impressed by the range and quality here. Your blog's practical "let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater" approach to the reform of IP law is very much in keeping with my own line of thought. My new blog, Readable Web, is devoted to the problems we face as reading is transformed by the move of words from print to the networked screen. Copyright law and IP in general pose big, big problems, problems that call for thoughtful solutions not sloganeering. I have added Copyfight to the "Linkworthy" blogroll on my site and have started writing a post announcing it that I'll publish in a day or so. If Copyfight has a policy of reciprocity, I'd be delighted to have RW listed. If not, that's OK, too. Keep shining the light. Regards, Richard Fink

You aren’t being intellectually honest here. Copyfight should by rights be opposing any measure that restricts “fair” use of copyrighted works, which clearly includes typesetting Web pages, does it not? Why are you advocating marginally less draconian restrictions on what you would otherwise be arguing for – unfettered usage of fonts? Aren’t they in the great cultural commons? The creative commons? Aren’t there only so many ways to design an A or a dollar sign anyway? Why are you arguing in favour of restrictions on typeface usage? If you want to be consistent, I mean. In any event, font licensing is a matter of contract law, not copyright; as typeface designs are not copyrightable in the U.S., andyou may or may not be duplicating the underlying outline-font file. You may have agreed, as by clickwrap EULA, to certain contractual requirements, but calling those requirements “copyright” is a stretch.

Thanks for that perspective and the links.

This has all been very interesting. In 2001 I used Iuniverse to POD my first novel ($99). Initially their customer service was C+, but over the years they've successfully upgraded their payment systems so sales records (usually 3 months back) are downloadable. Since then I've had the mixed fortune of having a small indie 'traditional' publisher publish another novel... misprints, awful promotion... nice folks but in over their heads. I'm back to considerign POD again, and obviously the industry has mushroomed since then. This debate on Createspace has been especially intriguing as they'd caught my eye... thanks to everyone who has contributed to this discussion.