Free Textbook on Engineering Thermodynamics(thermodynamicsbook.com)
44 pointsby 2DcAf4 hours ago3 comments
  • 2DcAf4 hours ago
    Author here. Feel free to send questions of any kind.
    • tux32 hours ago
      Love the price transparency, the obvious followup question is where the other ~85% of the pie goes when I buy a ~50€ paper book, if the author only earns a little under 15%?

      I imagine printing will be about 2 to 5€, if it's not ultra cheap print on demand refuse. Is the rest all for publishers and Amazon dot com?

      • 2DcAf8 minutes ago
        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...

      • 2DcAfan hour ago
        Amazon takes the lion’s share, and then the rest of the pie looks very different depending on which route you go. Big publishers print in batches and have very low print/distribution costs. I ended up on the other end of the spectrum, self-publishing with Lulu (print-on-demand, so much higher costs). I wrote an article in French on exploring the economics of textbooks, from the open-source point of view, a few years back: https://framablog.org/2022/01/20/mais-ou-sont-les-livres-uni...
        • tux324 minutes ago
          Thanks, I enjoyed the article. I've bought a couple creative commons books (PDF and printed), both to have the physical artifact and to send gratitude to the author, in a form that unambiguously means something. I rarely see a pay-what-you-want option, but that would make sense to me. Buying a free PDF isn't really like buying an apple or a manufactured good, it feels more like buying music on Bandcamp. It costs nothing to copy a file, but I still want to send what I can.

          Sadly I haven't been very satisfied with print on demand books. It can be serviceable for textbooks, it does make prints a lot more accessible, but the quality has been pretty disappointing for me. When I buy a POD I often end up reading the PDF instead, which seems a bit wasteful.

        • WalterBrightan hour ago
          When selling a product through a reseller, the markup is around 80-100%. I was horrified by this in the 80s, but soon learned that the resellers would be out of business otherwise.

          The reason resellers exist is they do the marketing, warehousing, shipping, customer service, etc.

    • RITESH19852 hours ago
      Is it chemical engineering thermodynamics or the mechanical engineering one?
      • rationalistan hour ago
        I suggest clicking on the link and easily discover for yourself.
      • ninalanyonan hour ago
        A scan of contents list suggests that it is mostly about heat engines. No mention of chemistry. Chemical reactions are mentioned in passing in the text but with no detail. Also no obvious signs of much interest in conduction, convection, or radiation.

        So it's fairly narrow focus, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

        • 2DcAfan hour ago
          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!
  • quibono2 hours ago
    Nice, I’ll definitely check this out. You might want to look at optimising the PDF, it’s sitting at 40MB right now.
    • 2DcAfan hour ago
      Thanks! I think most of the weight comes from the PNG diagrams, but I don’t actually know: I’ll put it on my to-do list to investigate, maybe there are some easy wins here.
  • lain98an hour ago
    Engineering books are very expensive in my country. I want to give calculus a spin. Spivak is a hundred dollars.
    • ghaff36 minutes ago
      Calculus hasn't changed a whole lot. There are probably better books for learning than I used in the 1970s, but I have to believe that you can find pretty decent older calculus texts for not a lot.