There are quite a few textbooks available for free on the internet. I’ve posted on this before: Free calculus book, Free open-source college books, Free textbooks, Free ebook for learning Python, Free textbooks (I seem to have used that title twice!).
Here are two math textbooks I’ve heard about recently:
- A First Course in Linear Algebra by Robert A Beezer.
- Open Calculus by Matt Boelkins (reviewed by Robert Talbert) So far only single-variable differential calculus has been written.
There are about 500 more free math books listed by e-booksdirectory, including about 20 linear algebra texts and 20 calculus texts (the list is sorted by subcategory also).
On the free math book page, they also provide pointers to
- Free Astronomy Books
- Free Physics Books
- Free Programming Books
- Free Engineering Books
- Free Medical Books
Somewhat surprisingly, they put a link to programming, but not computer science, which I would have thought was closer to math. On their home page, they list about 22 major categories and more minor categories than I cared to count (they say 6983 free e-books in 600 categories).
I’ll want to look through the Free electronics books for the circuits course, to see if there is anything there we can use as a text. I’ve not been too excited by the expensive hard-copy texts I’ve found, but some of the free op-amp books look like they may be worth recommending as supplementary material at least.
It is nice that e-books directory is collecting pointers to the free resources, with statements by the author/publisher, but it would be even nicer if expert reviewers started doing comparative reviews of the online books and standard books on the same topics.
The quality of free books undoubtedly varies highly, though many have not had the careful attention of copy editors and book designers.
Some are abandoned by publishers because the market is too small and they have more recent books on which they can make more money. Some are vanity publications by authors who can’t find publishers. Some are early drafts being released for feedback before attempting to find a publisher. Some are very specialized and have too small a market to be worth the effort of commercial publication by either the authors or publishers. Some are being released altruistically by authors or publishers who believe in an open sharing of ideas and resources.
Gas station without pumps 
Why American like free things.
Nothing in this world is free.
Cost of ebooks are almost nill if you sell them by millions.
So just sell it at the 1/10 of the existing price.
That is enough for everyone .
Comment by mgozaydin — 2012 August 13 @ 23:50 |
I’m not sure I understand your point here. Someone collects a list of free books, and you say “nothing in this world is free”.
True enough—you have to pay for the computer and (most likely) the internet access to get the free books, and you may find that the books are cluttered with ads (as I found for Concepts in Electric Circuits book that was listed). I won’t bother with other books from bookboon.com, now that I know that they stick ads in the middle of books.
The most expensive part of making a book is the author’s time. After that comes the editing (particularly if there is fact checking or checking the correctness of problem solutions). If an author chooses not to be paid for his or her effort and there is no editing, then the cost of distributing an e-book is indeed tiny—small enough that charging for the book is not needed to cover the cost.
Some of the e-books on electronics I looked at were published by manufacturers of electronic components—the more engineers understood how to use their components the more they could sell—there was no need to charge the engineers for the books as well.
Comment by gasstationwithoutpumps — 2012 August 14 @ 00:26 |
[…] More free textbooks (gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com) […]
Pingback by Becoming a Can of Beans | Right Wing Nuts and Bolts — 2012 August 16 @ 09:26 |