The Beauty of the PDF; or, One Man's Misfortune is Another Man's Pleasure; or, Airleaf Publishing Makes My Thesis Research Easier by Sucking it Up

I'm trying out the long title thing. I like it.

Anyway, I received an email from Philip Tagg today, containing instructions on how to obtain his out-of-print text "Ten Little Title Tunes: Towards a Musicology of the Mass Media."

Many factors have made a complete mess of distributing this book.

1. Airleaf publishing, the company we (the MMMSP) paid to print, bind and
distribute the book became the object of many scam complaints (see Appendix
for selection of sites documenting their malpractice) and were forced out of
business. I didn't find out about this until very recently.

2. "Ten Titles" went quickly out of print but interest remained quite high.
I had to make it available online because I don't have the time to organise
its re-publication as hard copy. That caused me a lot of extra
administrative work.

3. I receive around 100 emails each day during the teaching year. 50 of
those emails require some sort of action. I have no administrative
assistance and just can't keep up. This autumn I had a bad bout of 'flu.
After 4 days flat on my back, I opened my email inbox to discover not the
usual "74 unread messages" but "592 unread messages". I am now down to "296
unread messages".

So thanks to Airleaf Publishing being shady and going out of business, Prof. Tagg cannot reprint his much-in-demand book, and I now have a PDF that I can search for any reference material I want. Now I can digitally search for any references I need, easily flip to mentions of augmented seconds or Ennio Morricone, and copy/paste quotes as needed. It's beautiful for me, but bad for Prof. Tagg. Hence the title, or at least part of it.

You can help support the Mass Media Music Scholars' Press (MMMSP) by going to http://www.tagg.org/donate.html, and under "Special instructions for the
merchant" enter "for MMMSP."

If you are interested in obtaining Ten Little Title Tunes and cannot locate a hardcopy, head to http://fd2.formdesk.com/tagg/TenTitlesOnline and fill out a request form.

peace, love, and s
em

Selection of websites documenting Airleaf Publishing scams and complaints
http://www.todays-woman.net/poetry-scams-27.html,
http://www.loneprairie.net/art_blogs/artnews/2005/12/watch-out-for-airleaf-p
ublishing.html,
http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2007/01/the_airleaf_mor.html
http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewtopic.php?t=922
http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewtopic.php?t=4145
http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewtopic.php?t=3865
http://forums.writersweekly.com/viewtopic.php?t=3827
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=964
http://writerlystuff.blogspot.com/2007/12/hallelujah-airleaf-publishing-is-o
ut-of.html