Friday, November 9, 2012

A New Approach to College Textbooks. Finally.

That's not our slogan, but the slogan of http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/.

They did indeed come up with a useful (if not quite new) approach.  Their original idea (exactly like ours) was to offer free electronic versions of their textbooks as well as inexpensive paperback editions.

Our textbooks are just the ones we have written, and all of them are mathematics textbooks.  FlatWorldKnowledge hoped to have all college textbooks in all areas available in their model.

It's a great idea for the students.  Free PDF files.   If you also want a paperback, then buy one for a reasonable price (not the $100 or more the major publishers want).  It's also a great idea for authors.   The royalty from the big publishing houses is pretty small anyway, so why not bypass them and give the students a break.  Many students just use the free version -- some (enough) buy the paperback.

As it turns out, though, perhaps this "new" idea is not so commercially viable, or, if it is viable, it is just not profitable enough for most entrepreneurs. 

FlatWorldKnowledge has now announced: 

"Starting January 1, 2013, we will no longer be providing students with free access to our textbooks. Yes, the free Web format is going away, but our mission to provide high quality course materials at affordable prices remains as strong as ever. Students can read a complete online textbook with our Study Pass product, which includes note-taking, highlighting and study aids, for only $19.95. Our prices remain significantly lower than the $100+ that students are used to paying for other commercial textbooks."

So it seems it is up to individual academics (like us) to get quality study material directly to students for free and accept the fairly  modest compensation for paperback versions that on-demand publishers like CreateSpace offer.  

Any thoughts on this?



Saturday, May 19, 2012

Amazon Customers in Europe

press release
May 17, 2012, 9:00 a.m. EDT

CreateSpace Now Offers Independent Authors and Publishers Zero-Cost, Inventory-Free Distribution to Amazon Customers in Europe

Starting today, independent authors and publishers using CreateSpace can distribute their books directly to Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es and Amazon.it and earn industry-leading royalties...

 

Our textbooks are now available through Amazon in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.  If you search on your country's Amazon under books using "real analysis" or "Bruckner and Thomson" you should be able to find us (soon?).   If you happen to purchase one of our textbooks this way please send us a note.   Sorry, but english language versions only are available at the moment.

As always, of course, free PDF files for all of our books are available at the classicalrealanalysis.com web site.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Chinese Edition of Elementary Real Analysis

We are in the early stages of planning a Chinese edition of our elementary real analysis textbook.   If there is any interest out there, please write us words of encouragement or advice.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

We have now made the transition for our web site from M/S Office Live to another server.   You can access either of our sites:

classicalrealanalysis.info
or
classicalrealanalysis.com

for information about our real analysis texts, for free PDF downloads, for purchase of paperback editions, or for supplementary material [a work-in-progress] that will assist in your study or teaching of real analysis.

If you have any comments or advice on making these sites more useful please add your thoughts on this blog.

Friday, February 10, 2012

New ClassicalRealAnalysis.info web site

IMPORTANT NOTICE FEB 10, 2012

Our .COM web site is being redesigned and moving to a new server.

Go to

ClassicalRealAnalysis.info

for all resources now.

The .com site will reopen as a commercial site for the sale of paperback copies of our texts.


Why the move: MS Office Live has hosted this service since 2008. Originally they offered free domain name and free hosting for small businesses. Last year they cancelled free domain name. This year they cancelled free hosting. Since this web site is not portable the way MS designed it, we have reworked everything and found a new host (Gigapros).

The new site:

ClassicalRealAnalysis.info

is still under construction but has all the FREE files available as well as instructions for purchase of paperbacks.

Come back to

ClassicalRealAnalysis.com

after April 2012 to see a leaner more commercial site. The .info site will be the site most students are looking for.


FREE PDF POLICY: Our new policy is to distribute completely FREE PDF files for all of our texts.

You can find the files on

ClassicalRealAnalysis.info






Tuesday, November 29, 2011

FREE PDF FILES (Mathematics)



The YOUPUBLISH web site that we previously used to distribute our files appears to have dropped into a black hole. If you need any of our files please write to me
thomson@sfu.ca and I will send you a link to access the files without charge. [November 2011]

The texts currently available are:
  1. ELEMENTARY REAL ANALYSIS (undergraduate)
  2. REAL ANALYSIS (graduate)
  3. MATHEMATICAL DISCOVERY (freshman or senior high school)
  4. THE CALCULUS INTEGRAL (post calculus [experimental])
  5. THEORY OF THE INTEGRAL (specialist)





Monday, November 14, 2011

THEORY OF THE INTEGRAL

New book to be launched in April 2012.

Theory of the Integral, Brian S. Thomson, ClassicalRealAnalysis.com (2012), [ISBN 1467924393]

Prepublication PDF file: FREE PDF FILE date Nov 27 2011

Watch for updates on our web page and please send comments to the author.

This text is intended as a treatise for a rigorous course introducing the elements of integration theory on the real line. All of the important features of the Riemann integral, the Lebesgue integral, and the Henstock-Kurzweil integral are covered. The text can be considered a sequel to the four chapters of the more elementary text THE CALCULUS INTEGRAL which can be downloaded from our web site. For advanced readers, however, the text is self-contained.