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2024 April 8

World Scientific is marketing my book

Filed under: Circuits course — gasstationwithoutpumps @ 21:32
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World Scientific Publishing is marketing my book.  They have put out a flyer for several of their electronics books (https://www.worldscientific.com/pb-assets/wspc-site/catalogue-pdf/Electrical-Electronics-Engineering2024-25-1705395593457.pdf), and my book is the first one on the flyer!

Of course, they don’t mention that the PDF for the book is also available on LeanPub for only $7.99 (https://leanpub.com/applied_analog_electronics), but I wouldn’t expect them to.

2023 August 8

Amazon site actual launch!

Filed under: Circuits course — gasstationwithoutpumps @ 11:10
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Front cover of World Scientific Publishing's edition of Applied Analog ElectronicsThe Amazon link for my Applied Analog Electronics textbook (https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Analog-Electronics-First-Course/dp/9811254966) just went from pre-release sales to fully live (2023 August 8).  They are selling the hardback (978-981-125-441-3) for $176.30 and paperback (978-981-125-496-3) for $85.03, which is 11–13% less than the list price from World Scientific Publishing.

If you liked my book or course, go ahead and leave reviews there (though you should mention that you used a pre-publication draft of the book)!  Reviews are important to book sales, but there aren’t any yet.

The PDF of the book (with the same content, but different pagination and different cover) is still available through LeanPub for $7.99 at https://leanpub.com/applied_analog_electronics.  I get a little bit smaller royalties per copy from these sales (unless you pay the “recommended price” of $14.99, instead of the “minimum price” of $7.99), but I really wanted to make sure that a non-pirated, low-cost option remained available for students, so I got the publisher to agree to a contract that allowed me to sell electronic versions on LeanPub or on my own website (should I ever have one that enables sales).  Also anyone who bought the LeanPub edition (even with the free coupons I distributed to the class) can get the latest version of the PDF for free by logging into the LeanPub site.

Note: this post updates the earlier Amazon site live! post.

2023 June 19

Amazon site live!

Filed under: Circuits course — gasstationwithoutpumps @ 09:16
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The Amazon link for my Applied Analog Electronics textbook (https://www.amazon.com/Applied-Analog-Electronics-First-Course/dp/9811254966) just went live (2023 June 19).  They are selling the hardback (978-981-125-441-3) for $184 and paperback (978-981-125-496-3) for $94, which is $4 less than the list price from World Scientific Publishing. (Technically, the Amazon launch date is 2023 August 6—so until then are just pre-orders.)

If you liked my book or course, go ahead and leave reviews there (though you should mention that you used a pre-publication draft of the book)!

The PDF of the book (with the same content, but different pagination and different cover) is still available through LeanPub for $7.99 at https://leanpub.com/applied_analog_electronics.  I get a little bit smaller royalties per copy from these sales (unless you pay the “recommended price” of $14.99, instead of the “minimum price” of $7.99), but I really wanted to make sure that a non-pirated, low-cost option remained available for students, so I got the publisher to agree to a contract that allowed me to sell electronic versions on LeanPub or on my own website (should I ever have one that enables sales).

2023 June 14

Book printed!

Filed under: Circuits course — gasstationwithoutpumps @ 22:16
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I just received yesterday (2023 June 13) the first 4 author copies from World Scientific Publishing of my Applied Analog Electronics textbook. My initial contact with World Scientific Publishing suggested that they would be very quick (only 48 days from their expressing an interest in the book to our having a signed contract: 2021 Oct 7 to 2021 Nov 24—I put the contract on the blog in the post Contract signed with publisher!).

Their publishing process has some archaic hand-done steps—like retyping the entire reference list by hand (or maybe OCR from a bad fax, given the awful typos), and it took about 15 rounds of proofs to remove most of the damage done to the book by the typesetters and copy editors, so the book has come out about a year later than originally scheduled.

The most surprising thing in the contract is that they are continuing to let me sell the PDF through LeanPub (and my own web site, if I ever create one).  The royalties per book for Leanpub sales are about the same that I’ll get from World Scientific Publishing (at least at the recommended price), but the price from LeanPub is a lot lower (recommended $14.99, minimum $7.99). But hardback ($198) and paperback ($98) copies are now available from World Scientific Publishing (though at higher prices than originally quoted to me).

The LeanPub edition has my typesetting so the pagination is different, but the text is essentially the same (there may be some punctuation that I decided not to fight World Scientific about and there are minor differences in the title page, copyright page, and colophon).  The book cover is completely different, as I did not get any rights to their cover design for my LeanPub edition.

Here I am with my author copies.

The printed book looks pretty good inside.

I don’t really need 10 copies of the book for myself (4 have arrived, the other 6 are coming via surface mail and should be here in about 3 months), so I need to figure out what to do with the 9 that I don’t need.  Some thoughts I’ve had:

  • Give signed copies to my two “lead” undergrad tutors (if I can get their current addresses) who contributed a lot to the development of the course.
  • Offer signed copies to the first n people to adopt the course for their courses.
  • Give one to the UCSC library (though where they would put it is a mystery, since they have essentially eliminated the science and engineering collection of books and hardcopy journals).

If my parent were still alive, I’d send them a signed copy, but sadly, I published much to late for them to see the result.

If anyone has any ideas about other useful things to do with books, let me know in the comments!

2021 November 24

Contract signed with publisher!

Filed under: Circuits course,Uncategorized — gasstationwithoutpumps @ 10:31
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I’ve just signed a contract with World Scientific Publishing to publish my Applied Analog Electronics textbook.  They first contacted me on 2021 Oct 7 expressing an interest in the book, we met on Zoom on Oct 20, and they had a proposed contract to me by Oct 26, and we had a few back-and-forth rounds of negotiations.  The final contract was sent to me on Nov 19, I signed Nov 21, and they signed Nov 24. So the full process took about 48 days.

Here is the contract:

The most surprising thing in the contract is that they are continuing to let me sell the PDF through Leanpub (and my own web site, if I ever create one).  The royalties per book for Leanpub sales are higher than I’ll get from World Scientific Publishing, and the price will most likely be lower.

I did not use a lawyer in negotiating the contract—I contacted 4 lawyers who specialize in book contracts, but even the cheapest of them was too expensive, as I don’t really expect to make much money on this publishing deal.  I did use two online books:

Now I just have to get the 250MB of source files to the publisher and fill out the promotional questionnaire.  They may want me to make some small changes (like changing the title page).  When they are ready to publish, I’ll have to register the copyright also.

I’ll post here again when the book becomes available in paper.

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