WEBVTT NOTE A Short History of a Book Publishing Phenom 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Well, I noticed that everybody else seems to have a great prop to put up here, and my plan was to put up a copy of Larry Seacrest's book called Free Banking. 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:17.000 So I went out to the bookstore to get a copy, and turns out they're all gone. So there is no prop. Larry Seacrest's book came out only about two months ago. 3 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:25.000 It's a crushing attack on central banking. I urge you all to get it. Larry was thrilled to have his book back in print. 4 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:30.600 And it appeared in, I think it was in the late 1980s, something like that, but typically 5 00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:39.200 with an academic publishing house that buried it in state university libraries. 6 00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:44.400 And so it didn't have a big print run, and it always made me very sad that such a wonderful 7 00:00:44.400 --> 00:00:49.640 book couldn't achieve anything like a large distribution. 8 00:00:49.640 --> 00:00:54.400 But thanks to all the innovations we've undergone here, we were able to bring it out about two 9 00:00:54.400 --> 00:01:00.120 Two months ago, in a beautiful edition with a captivating cover, and it's been selling 10 00:01:00.120 --> 00:01:04.200 like crazy, Larry had been inspired by the appearance of this book and had been sending 11 00:01:04.200 --> 00:01:09.400 me all of his scholarly papers to also publish on Mises Org, things that nobody would have 12 00:01:09.400 --> 00:01:13.840 seen otherwise really, in these small journals. 13 00:01:13.840 --> 00:01:16.820 So they're all hosted on Mises Org. 14 00:01:16.820 --> 00:01:23.820 So I was very sad a couple of days ago, phone rang and the person on the other end said 15 00:01:23.820 --> 00:01:53.820 Hello, this is Molly Sechrist. And I knew, you know, he had died that morning. So it was a sad moment for us. He was a dear friend of my father's too. But, you know, I've been talking to Molly about this. The fact that we were able to get his book out and get a large distribution and that he was able to see it before his death, you know, he leaves a magnificent legacy. And I thought it was intriguing to walk out in the book 16 00:01:53.820 --> 00:02:14.820 Each year I like to give a round-up of where we stand in terms of publishing and online resources and each year I'm struck by how much progress we've made and this year really I do have lots of astounding facts to share with you. 17 00:02:14.820 --> 00:02:20.820 We have 300 books in our catalogue and the overwhelming majority of which have been internally published. 18 00:02:20.820 --> 00:02:26.180 We have an online store that's second to none in the world of pro-liberty publishing and 19 00:02:26.180 --> 00:02:33.980 this website that delivers 7 terabytes. It's not 6.7, it's 7. Our monthly quota was actually 20 00:02:33.980 --> 00:02:42.220 3. So there's a little button on our server host's website that goes to accounts to see 21 00:02:42.220 --> 00:02:46.940 what your monthly bill is. And I haven't pushed it yet. What am I going to do? If it's too 22 00:02:46.940 --> 00:02:49.460 large, what am I going to do? Shut down the website or something? I don't know. So we'll 23 00:02:49.460 --> 00:03:16.460 Mises, Rothbard, Haslett, Rupka, Hayek, Hutt, Spadaro, Trotterhof, Nock, Garrett, Rompahl, John T. Flynn, Boehm-Bawerk, Menger, Bastiat, Hahn, Say, Vicksel, among many others, in print and available for free download or purchase in hard copy. 24 00:03:16.460 --> 00:03:22.460 We had the complete run of seven journals online, many of which would have otherwise sunk without a trace. 25 00:03:22.460 --> 00:03:30.460 And in our own library we have 30,000 rare books, all of which are begging to be scanned and put online. 26 00:03:30.460 --> 00:03:39.460 So it's fair to say that the Mises Institute has achieved a level of productivity and effectiveness that none of us would have imagined possible in the past. 27 00:03:39.460 --> 00:03:45.620 Well, Mark had mentioned about what 7 terabytes amounts to. I did some further calculation 28 00:03:45.620 --> 00:03:49.700 after you spurred me off. I didn't know anybody, everybody didn't know what a terabyte was, 29 00:03:49.700 --> 00:03:54.460 but as I began to think about it, I didn't really know what a terabyte was. So I looked 30 00:03:54.460 --> 00:03:58.540 it up. It's nearly equivalent to the entire, now this is delivered every month, right, 31 00:03:58.540 --> 00:04:01.460 or at least this month, and we hope that we're going to be able to sustain it out of the 32 00:04:01.460 --> 00:04:07.220 Mises org. This is total data. Nearly the equivalent to the entire printed collection 33 00:04:07.220 --> 00:04:17.780 at the Library of Congress. I've done work at the Library of Congress, and you have to 34 00:04:17.780 --> 00:04:20.380 sit there. Have you ever been to the Library of Congress? You have to fill out a piece 35 00:04:20.380 --> 00:04:24.300 of paper and say, well, I want this book. And they say, great, we'll get it to you sometime 36 00:04:24.300 --> 00:04:28.700 within the next eight hours. They do say this. And then you have to wait for eight hours, 37 00:04:28.700 --> 00:04:33.420 you know, cobwebs on you and everything. And then they bring to you a slip of paper that 38 00:04:33.420 --> 00:04:35.420 Sorry sir, it's not in the stacks. 39 00:04:35.420 --> 00:04:37.420 Sorry sir, it's not in the stacks. 40 00:04:37.420 --> 00:04:39.420 Where to go? I don't know, it's not there. 41 00:04:39.420 --> 00:04:45.420 Anyway, we hope that this means books that are in the stacks in the Library of Congress. 42 00:04:45.420 --> 00:04:52.420 Another way to look at it is that it's 335,000 trees made into paper and printed. 43 00:04:52.420 --> 00:05:01.420 And delivering digitally, just think of the glorious things that Mises Org is doing to help the environment. 44 00:05:01.420 --> 00:05:06.420 The tree-huggers should just love us. It's our kind of recycling. 45 00:05:06.420 --> 00:05:11.420 So many people drop by and ask how it is that this came to be accomplished. 46 00:05:11.420 --> 00:05:18.420 And with all of our endeavors, it's just been a matter of tiny steps taken every day by the staff, 47 00:05:18.420 --> 00:05:26.420 along with the willingness of our members and donors to provide financial support through faith and the ideals that the Mises Institute represents. 48 00:05:26.420 --> 00:05:30.420 The guiding principle of management here, and I get this question all the time, what is the guiding principle? 49 00:05:30.420 --> 00:05:35.420 It can always and everywhere be summed up in a single principle, generosity. 50 00:05:35.420 --> 00:05:41.420 The Mises Institute gives as much as it can, as often as it can. That's really it. 51 00:05:41.420 --> 00:05:46.420 We've never believed in withholding education. We've never closed these treasures behind locked walls. 52 00:05:46.420 --> 00:05:52.420 We've never hesitated to make ideas available to as many people as possible insofar as the technology permits it. 53 00:05:52.420 --> 00:05:57.420 Our focus has never been on growth as such, but rather just simply service. 54 00:05:57.420 --> 00:06:06.220 This is a model that Lew Rockwell adopted at the very outset of the Mises Institute. 55 00:06:06.220 --> 00:06:11.940 The first book that the Institute published has a very special place in my heart and mind. 56 00:06:11.940 --> 00:06:15.720 It was Theory and History by Mises. 57 00:06:15.720 --> 00:06:21.420 The Institute published it in 1985 and I somehow got a copy of it in my last year in college 58 00:06:21.420 --> 00:06:23.580 and it had a new introduction by Murray Rothbard. 59 00:06:23.580 --> 00:06:53.580 The Theory of Money and Credit 60 00:06:53.580 --> 00:06:59.260 Really, it shook me to my very foundations. His core argument is for methodological dualism. 61 00:06:59.260 --> 00:07:03.780 It's the idea that a different method of understanding, a different standard of proof applies to the 62 00:07:03.780 --> 00:07:09.980 social sciences as versus the natural sciences. He argues for a pure theory as applied to 63 00:07:09.980 --> 00:07:14.580 economics, deductive theory as the core of economic reasoning. And he further argues 64 00:07:14.580 --> 00:07:20.780 that the great ideological errors of our time, socialism, fascism, racialism, interventionism, 65 00:07:20.780 --> 00:07:29.780 Inflationism, legal positivism, historicism, whatever, they all have roots and a refusal to bow to the truths gleaned from economic reasoning. 66 00:07:29.780 --> 00:07:35.780 And to read this book was really a mind-blowing experience for anyone who sat through hundreds of hours of lectures in any college. 67 00:07:35.780 --> 00:07:38.780 It is utterly and completely transformative. 68 00:07:38.780 --> 00:07:48.780 Now I like to imagine how history might have worked itself out in my own life in the absence of this Mises Institute publishing program that brought this book out from obscurity. 69 00:07:48.780 --> 00:08:03.780 In no way I would have seen this book or read it or been challenged by Mises' ideas. In fact, this text and probably many of Mises' other works would have remained in obscurity and this applies to millions of people and thousands of titles. 70 00:08:03.780 --> 00:08:14.780 Lew Rockwell had worked at Arlington House Publishers, which was another case of a publisher that charted its own course against the mainstream and Lew had seen the power of Mises' prose. 71 00:08:14.780 --> 00:08:44.780 In fact, he had been the editor of several of his books and he was struck by the fact that it was left to this one tiny publisher to keep Mises's books in print and part of the goal of founding the institute was to make sure that Mises's works and also his ideas would enjoy a permanent home so that they would always be available and this he has done. The Mises Institute has a vast publishing apparatus in place more than 25 years later pushing not only Mises but also his students Rothbard, Sinholtz, Kirzner, as well as Mises's colleagues 72 00:08:44.780 --> 00:09:00.780 The Institute is hard at work bringing back in print and to the public eye the work of Misesian economists, philosophers, historians who wrote for the past 100 years, as well as the work of predecessors in the writings of today's scholars. 73 00:09:00.780 --> 00:09:05.780 So I'm very privileged to have watched the program grow and change with the technology through the years. 74 00:09:05.780 --> 00:09:11.780 So I'd like to tell a short history of it and then talk about the impact of the digital revolution 75 00:09:11.780 --> 00:09:16.780 and speak of some issues for the future and I hope to be able to leave time for questions. 76 00:09:16.780 --> 00:09:22.780 So in the beginning, publishing was a priority for the Institute, but the resources only allowed for the publication of short monographs 77 00:09:22.780 --> 00:09:28.780 like Rothbard's Essential von Mises, Sinholtz's Underground Economy, and our own publication called The Free Market. 78 00:09:28.780 --> 00:09:35.780 and Lew put me as editor of that. I think I was only six years old at the time. I was very pleased. 79 00:09:35.780 --> 00:09:41.780 He planned to start a journal with Murray Rothbard called The Review of Austrian Economics 80 00:09:41.780 --> 00:09:44.780 and there was a monograph on business cycle theory and a few other titles. 81 00:09:44.780 --> 00:09:50.780 In those days it was a real stretch for a tiny institute with no large donors and a staff of only a few 82 00:09:50.780 --> 00:09:57.780 and a very precarious existence in general. But consider what this provided. Mises had a home. 83 00:09:57.780 --> 00:10:04.780 Rothbard had a reliable writing and teaching outlet so that he could concentrate on what he did best. 84 00:10:04.780 --> 00:10:09.780 Students were getting scholarships to study economics and there were suddenly venues in which to publish. 85 00:10:09.780 --> 00:10:19.780 It's important to remember that Lew had no assurance at all that there would be a market in place to be interested in these titles and programs. 86 00:10:19.780 --> 00:10:23.780 He didn't know. Nor did he have a way to reach that market had it existed. 87 00:10:23.780 --> 00:10:38.780 We have a hard time remembering this now, but in those days the only way to find out about new publications was to slog through the library's reference section, open books like Books in Print, or lug around the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. 88 00:10:38.780 --> 00:10:43.780 I remember when the free market was in there. I'm old enough to remember those books. 89 00:10:43.780 --> 00:10:50.780 The year 1986 was a huge one for the Mises Institute, for that was the year of the first issue of the Review of Austrian Economics. 90 00:10:50.780 --> 00:10:56.040 Economics. The appearance of that journal drained a fantastic amount of resources, emotional 91 00:10:56.040 --> 00:11:01.780 and financial, from the Institute. Someday someone will have to write it up, write up 92 00:11:01.780 --> 00:11:05.360 all the details, but let me just say that Lew and Murray came face to face with some 93 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:11.280 of the most powerful interest groups that did not want that journal published. The enemies 94 00:11:11.280 --> 00:11:18.120 of the RAE did everything in their power to kill it and destroy it, and destroy any prospect 95 00:11:18.120 --> 00:11:20.320 for an Austrian-focused academic journal. 96 00:11:20.320 --> 00:11:22.560 I remember when Lew was telling me the story 97 00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:25.760 in the office one day, and I found it just incredible. 98 00:11:27.120 --> 00:11:31.220 And he was very alarmed, but typical of both Lew and Murray, 99 00:11:31.220 --> 00:11:34.120 they took it all as a sign that they were on the right track. 100 00:11:35.280 --> 00:11:37.680 It took incredible moral courage to persevere, 101 00:11:37.680 --> 00:11:39.360 but against all odds, they did it. 102 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:42.000 The journal appeared and later became the quarterly journal 103 00:11:42.000 --> 00:11:43.600 of Austrian economics. 104 00:11:43.600 --> 00:11:47.080 Now, all of these years later, it seems inevitable somehow 105 00:11:47.080 --> 00:11:50.720 that there had to be such a journal we all take it for granted just a part of the 106 00:11:50.720 --> 00:11:52.360 scholarly landscape 107 00:11:52.360 --> 00:11:55.360 but we need to appreciate that this almost didn't happen 108 00:11:55.360 --> 00:11:59.400 and it only did happen because of an incredible combination of moral stamina 109 00:11:59.400 --> 00:12:02.480 and intellectual dedication 110 00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:05.680 so let me return now to the whole issue of the market for these ideas 111 00:12:05.680 --> 00:12:08.920 Lew suspected that there was hunger for the ideas of liberty in the form that 112 00:12:08.920 --> 00:12:12.200 Mises and Rothbard presented them but he couldn't know 113 00:12:12.200 --> 00:12:16.480 for sure mostly this was not the issue that concerned him what drove him 114 00:12:16.480 --> 00:12:25.480 and the belief that there should be a market for these ideas, and if one didn't currently exist, he would make sure that one would be created. 115 00:12:25.480 --> 00:12:33.480 My friends, this is an incredible act of faith, one not driven by the desire for fame, fortune, heaven knows there's none of that, or power, quite the opposite, 116 00:12:33.480 --> 00:12:40.480 but a kind of crazy idealism that sets out to make a difference in the world and takes concrete steps necessary to achieve that. 117 00:12:40.480 --> 00:12:48.480 It is driven by the belief that something can be created out of nothing, the same motivation that has driven entrepreneurs from the beginning of time. 118 00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:53.480 But what were Lew and Murray's telling? What were they trying to convince the world to accept? 119 00:12:53.480 --> 00:13:00.480 Not a good or a service, but simply an idea. This is just about the most implausible notion one can imagine. 120 00:13:00.480 --> 00:13:06.480 And through this implausible possibility, they made a huge dent in the universe. 121 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:11.480 and let me fast-forward now to the 1990s when more books began to come out 122 00:13:11.480 --> 00:13:31.480 including Mises' Money Method and the Market Process, still in print, The Economics of Ludwig von Mises, Rothbard's Scholar-Creator Hero, Gordon's Secession State and Liberty, Rothbard's Case Against the Fed, a book that Lew specifically commissioned, What Has Government Done to Our Money, and also John Denson's The Cost of War, which is a pioneering volume. 123 00:13:31.480 --> 00:13:37.480 Putting all this together, we began to see the emergence of a comprehensive intellectual arsenal in defense of human liberty. 124 00:13:37.480 --> 00:13:43.480 It was a combination of new material plus old that challenged the dominant political and economic trends of the time. 125 00:13:43.480 --> 00:13:48.480 Lewis commissioned new works at every step while looking for older works to put back in print. 126 00:13:48.480 --> 00:13:52.480 And in those days, the preferred model was to publish our own smaller books, 127 00:13:52.480 --> 00:13:57.480 but depend on academic publishers with which to cooperate on the larger books. 128 00:13:57.480 --> 00:14:05.480 Part of the reason was financial. There were also considerations of marketing. The bigger publishers had a better infrastructure for getting books out the door. 129 00:14:05.480 --> 00:14:12.480 Of course, in publishing this way, there was a major cost, though we didn't think of that cost at the time. 130 00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:18.480 Although it's pressed upon us very much today, we lost copyright control of the book. 131 00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:24.480 It's not something people often think about. More precisely, some other institution gained control of the book. 132 00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:26.480 We're more careful now. 133 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:32.480 This factor wouldn't turn out to be hugely important into the great digital revolution of 1995 and following. 134 00:14:32.480 --> 00:14:38.480 I dated all this year from this year because this was the year that web browsing began to enter the mainstream, 135 00:14:38.480 --> 00:14:43.480 and the year that I think I finally upgraded to my first, if you want to call it an upgrade to Windows. 136 00:14:43.480 --> 00:14:51.480 It was the year that Murray Rothbard died, and at that moment there was a profound sense that we had lost the asset 137 00:14:51.480 --> 00:14:56.120 the asset that made everything else we had seem tiny by comparison. 138 00:14:56.120 --> 00:14:59.280 It was a time of total transformation of the Institute. 139 00:14:59.280 --> 00:15:03.200 Lew was personally devastated, of course, but determined to press on exactly as Murray 140 00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:04.560 would have him do. 141 00:15:04.560 --> 00:15:06.960 Our senior faculty redoubled their efforts. 142 00:15:06.960 --> 00:15:08.680 The same happened among our staff. 143 00:15:08.680 --> 00:15:11.680 We had to push forward for the sake of the ideals. 144 00:15:11.680 --> 00:15:14.400 This is what Lew said, and he provided the model. 145 00:15:14.400 --> 00:15:20.240 Also, the rejoicing of all of our enemies spurred us onward, too, I must say. 146 00:15:20.240 --> 00:15:25.840 We had lost Murray, but his passing coincided in time with the most remarkable publishing 147 00:15:25.840 --> 00:15:30.480 tool in human history, a tool that would take his ideas and that of the Austro-libertarian 148 00:15:30.480 --> 00:15:32.920 tradition on to new heights. 149 00:15:32.920 --> 00:15:36.440 The first Mises Institute website went live in 1996. 150 00:15:36.440 --> 00:15:40.840 This was the year that an incredible choice was forced on every existing institution in 151 00:15:40.840 --> 00:15:46.520 the world to go online or stay doing business the old way, and it was widely assumed that 152 00:15:46.520 --> 00:15:51.020 by choosing one path, you were forgoing the other path, and this is especially true in 153 00:15:51.020 --> 00:15:52.520 the world of publishing. 154 00:15:52.520 --> 00:15:57.540 The most obvious reason why this ominous choice, why this was an ominous choice dealt 155 00:15:57.540 --> 00:16:03.140 with money, going online was an extra expense, and it wasn't obvious why or how it would 156 00:16:03.140 --> 00:16:04.580 pay off financially. 157 00:16:04.580 --> 00:16:08.560 And for many years, in fact, the whole web business seemed like a huge money pit. 158 00:16:08.560 --> 00:16:10.520 And for many institutions, it remains so. 159 00:16:10.520 --> 00:16:14.700 Actually, it sort of still is for the Institute, now that I think about it, but for the Institute, 160 00:16:14.700 --> 00:16:18.560 The choice wasn't that difficult to make. Here we had a medium that was custom made 161 00:16:18.560 --> 00:16:23.620 for students. We could push our message out the door in nearly infinite amounts for an 162 00:16:23.620 --> 00:16:28.080 upfront investment. Yes, it was costly, but look at the payoff. We could reach people 163 00:16:28.080 --> 00:16:31.980 who would otherwise never know about our work. And over time we began to realize ever more 164 00:16:31.980 --> 00:16:38.340 just how powerful this medium really is. One of the great shocks was the reality of retrospective 165 00:16:38.340 --> 00:16:43.740 publishing where we were able to bring back extremely rare publications, some of which 166 00:16:43.740 --> 00:16:47.740 which had a very low circulation back into the mainstream of life. 167 00:16:47.740 --> 00:16:53.740 Publications such as Rothbard's Left and Right and early issues of the Journal of Libertarian Studies, 168 00:16:53.740 --> 00:16:55.740 most of which had vanished without a trace. 169 00:16:55.740 --> 00:17:01.740 The consciousness of what was possible began to rise even as technology advanced month by month. 170 00:17:01.740 --> 00:17:09.740 This was a time when scanning was difficult and inaccurate and overly heavy relative to bandwidth, 171 00:17:09.740 --> 00:17:11.740 what bandwidth would support. 172 00:17:11.740 --> 00:17:19.740 The scanning is accessible, beautiful and light, and as a result we've been moving forward with the drive to put online as much as humanly possible. 173 00:17:19.740 --> 00:17:24.740 Our online editions are superior to the others because you can always copy and paste out of them. 174 00:17:24.740 --> 00:17:28.740 It makes them better than Google Books or anybody else. You can find them very easily. 175 00:17:28.740 --> 00:17:36.740 We give the entire text with no fussy frames or odd software or demands for logging in or, you know, coffeeing up or whatever. 176 00:17:36.740 --> 00:17:47.740 And then there's the media. We were able to dig through the archives and find speeches by Mises and Rothbard and also Hayek in addition to the complete lecture series by Robert Lefebvre, among many others. 177 00:17:47.740 --> 00:18:01.740 Our own conferences were put online in audio and video, and I think just yesterday Chad put up a Rothbard lecture from 1983, from the Gold Conference. Remarkable, isn't it? Like all history is sort of happening at one time or something. 178 00:18:01.740 --> 00:18:09.740 As a result, the vast corpus of our work and our own tradition is increasingly available, either in print or online or both. 179 00:18:09.740 --> 00:18:15.740 Now, earlier I spoke about the challenge and opportunity that digital media meant for all institutions. 180 00:18:15.740 --> 00:18:21.740 What we discovered over time is that digital and physical are not substitutes. They're really complements. 181 00:18:21.740 --> 00:18:27.740 That is to say, in real life, people use both. Sometimes we use digital and sometimes we use physical. 182 00:18:27.740 --> 00:18:34.740 In the course of our lives, we rely on both forms, with each medium enhancing the value of the other. 183 00:18:34.740 --> 00:18:39.740 When we publish a book now, we put it online the same time it comes out physically, the whole text. 184 00:18:39.740 --> 00:18:43.740 I'm not sure I know anybody else who does this. 185 00:18:43.740 --> 00:18:51.740 Actually, lately we've been putting out the digital version even before the physical version comes out, 186 00:18:51.740 --> 00:18:54.740 which is driving our publications department crazy. 187 00:18:54.740 --> 00:19:07.740 This is made possible by a major change in our operations. We stopped giving away copyrights to others to control, precisely so that the material could reach the broadest possible audience. 188 00:19:07.740 --> 00:19:16.740 We've even taken the step of putting the entire empire of Mises org into the status of creative commons that happened just two weeks ago. 189 00:19:16.740 --> 00:19:17.740 ." 190 00:19:17.740 --> 00:19:25.220 Now, if there is time, if we do have time for questions, I would like to address some 191 00:19:25.220 --> 00:19:28.580 more of this issue of the Institute publishing things. 192 00:19:28.580 --> 00:19:35.020 We really face this choice with the Hohesman biography, that big thick book that's out 193 00:19:35.020 --> 00:19:36.020 there. 194 00:19:36.020 --> 00:19:39.860 This is obviously a masterpiece and we had several bids from several publishers, major 195 00:19:39.860 --> 00:19:50.180 Publishers, important prestigious publishers that sell books for lots of money and we turn 196 00:19:50.180 --> 00:19:55.700 them down mainly because we knew we could do a better looking book at a lower price 197 00:19:55.700 --> 00:20:00.300 but also because we wanted to maintain control of the text. Well basically we wanted to offer 198 00:20:00.300 --> 00:20:05.980 it free online and we could not get any publisher to agree to let us to do that. It's interesting 199 00:20:05.980 --> 00:20:14.980 Now, the immediate objection to this policy is that it cuts into the sales of physical versions, and I'm sure you're thinking that, right? 200 00:20:14.980 --> 00:20:23.980 But if that's the worry, you really have to ask yourself why you would want to charge people for a physical version they don't want or need. 201 00:20:23.980 --> 00:20:31.980 That's interesting. If they're happy with the digital version and don't like the book enough to buy it, there really isn't a reason to sell it. 202 00:20:31.980 --> 00:20:42.980 To put it plainly, it's very bad management and very short-sighted commerce to ask people to cough up for something they won't be happy with. Do you understand? 203 00:20:42.980 --> 00:20:52.980 If you have a good product that you're proud to distribute, it's never a mistake to give more information rather than less, especially if you can do it at low cost. 204 00:20:52.980 --> 00:21:00.980 This is an important principle, and I run into institutions all the time that don't understand this. They think we're crazy. 205 00:21:00.980 --> 00:21:09.980 I think they're crazy. The second major error that people make is not exclusive to the digital problem, but it afflicts all institutions. 206 00:21:09.980 --> 00:21:14.980 They assume a fixed market for their product, and they forget their evangelical aims. 207 00:21:14.980 --> 00:21:19.980 Lew has never made this mistake. As I mentioned, he began with virtually no market at all. 208 00:21:19.980 --> 00:21:22.980 The educational efforts created something out of nothing. 209 00:21:22.980 --> 00:21:28.980 And following this model, the Institute has always been 50% evangelism and 50% delivery from the very beginning. 210 00:21:28.980 --> 00:21:39.980 The Mises Institute is now the only reason that the major works of all the Austrians and major American libertarian writers are in print and available to the world. 211 00:21:39.980 --> 00:21:46.980 And to conjure up a world without the Institute's publishing program is to observe a dimly lit scene turning to darkness. 212 00:21:46.980 --> 00:21:55.980 But with this program, one can more easily imagine a bright future for humanity, the very one of which lovers of liberty have long dreamed. 213 00:21:55.980 --> 00:21:59.980 And I'm going to leave it at that and I hope it answers some of your questions. 214 00:21:59.980 --> 00:22:15.980 I know there have to be questions about this crazy stuff. 215 00:22:15.980 --> 00:22:21.980 What would be the expert on stamp on this question of trademark and how you protect yourself? 216 00:22:21.980 --> 00:22:23.980 Trademark or copyright? 217 00:22:23.980 --> 00:22:24.980 Copyright. 218 00:22:24.980 --> 00:22:33.980 Well, it slowly dawned on us over a long period of time one of the things you learn about this whole question of whether or not something is in copy. 219 00:22:33.980 --> 00:22:41.980 How can I possibly answer this question? This is an important issue and I could talk for endless hours about it. 220 00:22:41.980 --> 00:22:51.980 The main thing that you have to look at is the law and don't trust the institutions that you think might be the owners because they will lie to you. 221 00:22:51.980 --> 00:23:00.980 This happens all the time. They will lie to you. And they will try to get you to not print things that are in fact or in public domain. 222 00:23:00.980 --> 00:23:09.980 You can get lots of crazy warnings from anonymous emails and all sorts of things, but you have to adhere to the law and do your research. 223 00:23:09.980 --> 00:23:18.980 Lots of the information is in fact public, but you have to know the law, know it well, and then forge ahead with confidence and do the right thing. 224 00:23:18.980 --> 00:23:29.860 Now there are many works that have been published since 1963 that are, well look, lots of things 225 00:23:29.860 --> 00:23:33.060 came together in history to make all of this possible. 226 00:23:33.060 --> 00:23:38.700 One of the most exceptional, I'd like you to think about this, large publishers tended 227 00:23:38.700 --> 00:23:44.500 to renew their copyrights after the 28 years passed, this is before 1963, they tended to 228 00:23:44.500 --> 00:24:14.500 Renew their copyrights, which would tie them up for another, I don't know, 600 years or something, but most of the works in our tradition were published by not major publishers, but by lower level publishers that didn't have a long life and they don't have a big staff of lawyers to keep up with renewals and things, so lots of our work was not renewed. By ours I mean the Austro-libertarian tradition. This turns out to be a wonderful thing. Think about this. Interesting, isn't it? 229 00:24:14.500 --> 00:24:20.260 If you were a libertarian writing in 1935 and you want to be published by Knopf or whatever 230 00:24:20.260 --> 00:24:24.500 big publisher was around, you couldn't get them to pay attention to your ideas, so you 231 00:24:24.500 --> 00:24:29.180 had to go with some other thing, some other small press somewhere, and you were sad about 232 00:24:29.180 --> 00:24:35.100 that. Well, it was a good thing because the press went out of business later and the work 233 00:24:35.100 --> 00:24:40.060 was not renewed and it went into public domain and now it's in print. If it was renewed, 234 00:24:40.060 --> 00:24:43.060 would not be in print. Extraordinary, isn't it? 235 00:24:43.060 --> 00:24:48.060 So we're very fortunate, very, very fortunate in that way. 236 00:24:48.060 --> 00:24:51.060 So there's that. 237 00:24:51.060 --> 00:24:55.060 The other thing is that there's a great deal of mythology about copyright. 238 00:24:55.060 --> 00:25:00.060 People think that if I can just maintain this government-granted monopoly or this text, 239 00:25:00.060 --> 00:25:04.060 then I'll be in good shape and make the big bucks. 240 00:25:04.060 --> 00:25:06.060 It's just not true. 241 00:25:06.060 --> 00:25:21.060 The best thing you can do, the most important thing you can do is get attention for your work and that's why the institutes went into Creative Commons and that's why we're increasingly publishing our own things so that we can distribute them as widely as possible. 242 00:25:21.060 --> 00:25:29.060 Copywriting is very much the enemy of free flow of ideas. It's been catastrophic. 243 00:25:29.060 --> 00:25:32.260 It's interesting how sometimes these things work out. We were thinking about putting into 244 00:25:32.260 --> 00:25:41.460 press this Robert Taft book called Foreign Policy for Americans. It was renewed. The 245 00:25:41.460 --> 00:25:48.900 book came out in like 1954. Is that right? 53, 52, something like that. The book was 246 00:25:48.900 --> 00:25:54.320 renewed and so it was under copyright. I suspected it was what's called an orphan work. Somebody 247 00:25:54.320 --> 00:26:05.320 I think he owns it, but I don't know who it could be. It could be the guy working in the garden out there. It could be, you know, anybody on the planet, you know, because you can have a copyright passed on to you and then pass it on to somebody else and somebody else and so on. 248 00:26:05.320 --> 00:26:22.320 I finally ended up calling Robert Taft's, let's see, what is he, grandson? Yeah. And talked to him about it. And I said, I think you might own this. And he said, well, you know, I just don't know. I don't have to go through probate, you know, dig up the records. I just really don't know. 249 00:26:22.320 --> 00:26:25.680 and and he didn't know and nobody knew and but he finally gave us you know 250 00:26:25.680 --> 00:26:30.520 permission to put it put it online but that's what happens when things are 251 00:26:30.520 --> 00:26:36.840 renewed I mean it kills the book it kills the book you think about this if 252 00:26:36.840 --> 00:26:40.480 you're ever in a position to decide to read well you might find yourself in a 253 00:26:40.480 --> 00:26:45.240 position to renew a book I just have to tell you it's a bad idea don't do it you 254 00:26:45.240 --> 00:26:48.480 think you're doing the right thing protecting the heritage of you know your 255 00:26:48.480 --> 00:27:03.480 The online products have come a long way in the past 15 years. Is there a next step in the evolution to make it even better that Mises is all about? 256 00:27:18.480 --> 00:27:27.480 They have, they permit you to publish a book and embed it in a blog. The whole book. So you can turn the pages. I've got several samples on the blog now. 257 00:27:27.480 --> 00:27:36.480 So, I don't know, we just all kind of went nuts for this thing. That was about a week ago and already we've got about 15 books on that little thing, you know. 258 00:27:36.480 --> 00:27:43.480 And the company loves us. They're writing us notes. Hey, it's fantastic. Whole book's free. This is wonderful. You know, color covers. 259 00:27:43.480 --> 00:27:47.480 And now they're being embedded in blogs all around, you know. It's just a matter of staying up with the technology. 260 00:27:47.480 --> 00:27:53.560 It's very difficult to make long-term plans because in a vibrant, dynamic marketplace, 261 00:27:53.560 --> 00:28:00.840 with technology changing constantly, you have to adjust according to innovations as they 262 00:28:00.840 --> 00:28:02.200 come along. 263 00:28:02.200 --> 00:28:08.200 But let me just say that we'll continue to do everything we possibly can do. 264 00:28:08.200 --> 00:28:13.500 I know that we have, before the end of the year, there will be another, probably 20 books 265 00:28:13.500 --> 00:28:15.360 come into print. 266 00:28:15.360 --> 00:28:16.360 Just for example. 267 00:28:16.360 --> 00:28:29.360 Can you tell us a little bit about your bestsellers and sort of what are the metrics of the 50,000 copies if you'll allow us? 268 00:28:29.360 --> 00:28:31.360 Oh, you want numbers, yeah. 269 00:28:31.360 --> 00:28:33.360 And you could relate it also to the web. 270 00:28:33.360 --> 00:28:50.360 Well, our best-selling book right now is probably, it's a contest between Rothbard's Mystery of Banking, another book that came and went very quickly, I think it was 1982, Judy? 1982, something like that. 271 00:28:50.360 --> 00:29:01.360 And we just brought it out again in a beautiful new edition, and it's selling like crazy. And it's competing with Economics I Lesson, written in 1946 by Henry Haslip. 272 00:29:01.360 --> 00:29:11.360 Tragically, we can't put that one online, and there are lots of things I would like to say about that publicly. 273 00:29:11.360 --> 00:29:15.360 Who sold you the economics and what was it? 274 00:29:15.360 --> 00:29:21.360 Yeah, it's very, you know, let's just talk afterwards. 275 00:29:21.360 --> 00:29:23.360 Don't forget the question. 276 00:29:23.360 --> 00:29:46.360 Well, so, I'm wondering how much I can really say. Well, let me just say that, you know, I would like to give you numbers, but I think there's reasons, there's reasons. Well, let me just say it's a lot. A lot of books. Yeah, yeah. 277 00:29:46.360 --> 00:29:55.360 The reason has nothing to do with wanting to keep internal secrets or something like that, but there's a lot of broad considerations. 278 00:29:55.360 --> 00:30:07.360 I don't have a figure, but let me just say that this year alone we'll probably distribute a hundred thousand books, maybe, in physical form. 279 00:30:07.360 --> 00:30:09.360 Thanks a lot, Jeff.