Publishing your thesis / essay and get paid?

[Ro56]

Hi,

 

I found this German publisher named GRIN who pays you either $10 for each university / scholarly papers or essays  you upload and publish or you get paid up to 40% of each sale.

Here's the link, they already have 140,000 ebooks published: www.grin.com?amb=fl

 

I published some essays myself, and I am planing on submittig my thesis as well. So far I am happy with the service.

 

What do you think?

[Eigen]

Generally considered a scam. 

 

Most likely using them as sources for "on demand" paper writing. 

[selecttext]

who do you think is going to pay to read your thesis?

[lewin]

who do you think is going to pay to read your thesis?

 

Nobody wants to read what you write

[MadScience]

I agree with the above posts, definitely reeks of scam. The reality is, it is highly unlikely that anyone will ever want to read your thesis, let alone pay to read it. Heck, I don't think my committee advisers even read my thesis in grad school, and that was their job!

[Ro56]

   

 

Well, so far I am quite content with the sales of my essays.

 

Of course, there are only a limited number of people who take interest in academic topics. On the other hand, this highly depends on the area of study.

A German friend of mine, who got me into the whole topic, has successfully published a thesis on social media strategies and online marketing through this site. Works well for him.

 

It couldn't possibly harm, I guess. Also GRIN seems to have a strict anti-plagiarism policy.

[Eigen]

I can almost guarantee you that essays are being sold to undergrads to use for classes. 

 

I can't imagine there being almost any sort of market for non-peer reviewed essays by people who are not well known in the field.

 

Also, to expand, GRIN is a derivative of Verlag, which you can find numerous threads on the Chronicle forums as a "scam" publisher. 

[fuzzylogician]

 It couldn't possibly harm, I guess. Also GRIN seems to have a strict anti-plagiarism policy.

 

In that case, I have a bag of fresh high quality air I'd like to sell you.

[Roquentin]

Shortly after I defended my MA thesis I was contacted by a publisher (ha!) like this. They offered to print my thesis as a book, and they said that I would get a free copy (oooo, shiny!). I looked them square in the monocle and said NEIN!

 

Publishers like this exist to satisfy the vanity of young scholars (also, I've heard that certain European students are required to publish as a condition of their degree - these venues provide that outlet). These publishers know that they'll make a few bucks when Granny and Momma Roquentin buy his book, and they get to wheel-and-deal young authors who are very unsophisticated when it come to publishing their work.

 

Here's the rub. You don't want non-reviewed, vanity publications on your cv. Hiring committees will see these a mile away, and they'll assume that you're a rube who isn't prepared to navigate the waters of serious, professional research dissemination. These "publications" will diminish your credibility. So for the love of fun, save your valuable ideas for the pages of reputable journals in your field! Publish your monographs with real academic publishers! Don't waste your talent!

[CageFree]

I'm just going to say it. It seems the OP is simply someone advertising the website, i.e. spamming. I couldn't imagine selling one of my papers for "10 dollars." My work is worth WAY more than that.

[Andean Pat]

After a big international conference, we all lecturers were contacted by a Spanish publisher. I was so proud!!!! Fortunately, I listened to my advisor and did not send them anything. 

 

My first clue was that they had found my paper in the digital library of my undergrad school. Bullshit. The only place it was published was in a proper conference memoirs, with ISBN and everything.

 

The second suspicious hint was that I could not contact them by phone, that the whole point of this cheap publishing was to do it by e-mail. 

 

I googled them and found SEVERAL books published by them in amazon, barnes&noble, etc etc. Shortly after, an e-mail arrived from a fellow lecturer in the conference alerting the rest of us of the scam. They've contacted me a year after that and then a year after that. 

[GRIN]

Dear all,

 

I know that it has been a while since this debate came up, but as an editor with GRIN, I’d like to answer some of your questions.
 

GRIN is a publishing company from Germany that lists works by over 65,000 authors in its catalogue. Apart from students, there are also many lecturers and professors amongst our authors.
 

Compared to our competitors, the royalties we pay for every published paper are in fact high. As an alternative to the one-time payment of ten euro, you can also choose to receive a certain percentage of the price every time someone buys your paper. Please keep in mind that it is free for authors to publish their papers with GRIN. They therefore do not take any risk by uploading their work.
GRIN also takes care of spreading the paper to all major online bookstores worldwide, thereby highly increasing the opportunities for sales.

 

Experience shows that even the most specialized papers find their audience. However, if you don’t want your name to be connected with your early papers, you can always choose to publish anonymously or to use a pseudonym.

 

As for the issue of plagiarism, I can assure you that copying from works that have been published with GRIN is much more dangerous than plagiarizing printed books or magazines. After all, GRIN is very well known amongst scholars and all our works can be searched entirely on Google or on our web page. In addition, we offer instructors free access to the respective work if they assume that a student might have copied from it.

 

I hope that this information proves helpful. If you have any further questions, please feel free to let me know.

Many greetings from Munich,

Anna
GRIN Verlag

[biisis]

Scam or not (and I think the legitimacy of this company is highly dubious) fuck publishing behind pay walls, particularly creepy for-profit non-refereed online presses. 

[lewin]

They therefore do not take any risk by uploading their work.

 

The risk is you look like a moron who doesn't realize that self-publishing is worse than useless. It screams, "This couldn't get accepted anywhere noteworthy and I'm trying to trick my colleagues, who I must think are stupid not to notice."

Edited September 16, 2014 by lewin