It’s accessible with end-of-high school math: you need to be okay-ish with integration and derivation. Practicing engineers might find it a bit slow, but that’s for each to decide :-)
Glad the book can help! Regarding image size, it’s on my todo list now (see thread further down the page).
I am using Payhip for the transaction, and then Paypal. Fees end up averaging 0,5€. Calculating in terms of percentage is not really helpful here at such low prices: there is an incompressible flat rate pretty much anywhere you go. See it differently: these intermediary fees go towards making the UX smooth, the payment secure, reducing fraud etc. I want to spend my energy on the content, not making a credit card form :-)
I used to think that way about the publishing industry too, but I now think that this description is not deserved. Just observing it from an operational perspective: a laptop to type, software to edit, book printers that will talk to you, payment rails, and even access to world-class distribution: it’s all available to us now. On the other side of the market, students and teachers are not locked in either. Barriers to entry are nonexistent. For context, see the links I posted in my other comments on this page. It’s all in our hands!
Right; there are lots more options available to authors today.
However, hard copy textbooks are still the dominant form in much of the developing world. We "technically literate" people often forget that we live in a bubble of our own making. A large percentage of students in the developing world simply do not have the means nor access to technology the way we do. They are dependent on low-cost printed textbooks to study and avail opportunities to get ahead in life.
The Textbook publishing industry is a cartel often pricing their offerings out-of-reach of economically disadvantaged students. Education and its prerequisite, access to textbooks, should be treated the same way we make available generic drugs in the pharmaceutical industry i.e. cheap/low-cost, decent quality offerings available to everybody. The prices of many of the textbooks is often eye-watering and that is why you have many low-cost textbook publishers in the developing world.
My main frustration is that most(all?) authors/professors are quite willing to forego any profits if it means they can get their textbooks into the hands of the students who need them. It is the publishing industry acting as the middleman and focused solely on profits which is ruining everything for everybody.
The payment for the paid-for PDF is processed through Payhip. As far as I can test here in Germany no cell number is required. Maybe you trigger some extra verification that I don’t?
As for the email, I require it so that I can subscribe all of my readers to a weekly newsl… haha just joking. Juuuuust joking :-) If you try it, you will find that a bogus email address works just fine.
Thank you! To be honest I think there is not much there because when I started 17 years ago my technical skills were much shallower, plotting a diagram to visualize/compare two models would have been quite a lot of work. But if I can be frank, at undergraduate level playing with equations of state is not expected nor a requirement. I’m happy to just say "there are others and they all have some common things". I‘d much rather the students and I spend our energy wrapping our heads around say the concept of entropy and what it allows us to do. Regardless, I appreciate your comment muchly (and shall look up CoolProp tomorrow).
Following up with actual numbers for the project, from Lulu, in Euros:
List Price 43
Print cost 11
Distribution fees (read: Amazon, 50% of selling price): 21.5
Lulu share of profit : 2
Rest to author: 8,5
Because of the different prices on different locales in different currencies the actual share I receive averages 7€ (gross revenue before income tax, although in my case the yearly income is too small to trigger it where I live).
For books sold directly on Lulu
List price 43
Print cost 11
Lulu share of profit: 6.5
Rest to author: 25.5
The mindset should not be "this is all that’s left for me", however: a book is many things at once and for better or for worse, Amazon creates a big part of it. Kevin kelly has some excellent advice at https://kk.org/thetechnium/everything-i-know-about-self-publ...
Indeed! Truth be told, I think the book really is missing a chapter on refrigeration systems. I had to call it done at some point for my own sanity. Maybe someone will jump in and add one someday!
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