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Free Springer math books

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Re: Free Springer math books

#61

Post by spike021 »

thebear wrote: post #60
sireat wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of a royalty are we talking about in say 2014? Enough for a cup of coffee or for a used VW Golf? I know that it is rare for modern programming books to make much money for their authors. Thus I imagine for a highly specialized math book it would be even rare.

After the initial excitement ;-) had settled down in the mid-nineties, it was, on order of magnitude, about $100 per year. Every once in a while, an interested mathematician would buy a copy. Other than that, in order to sell such a book, there has to be a graduate level class on the subject at some university (attended typically by about 5 people), and the teacher has to pick your book over a handful of other option…

From what I've experienced, it's common to have mostly expensive texts (for undergrad level) that can reach upwards of $175. Occasionally there are free texts from professors at other universities, or just authors in general. But more often than not they're quite pricey.

Free would be great! I think a lot of students go the alternative route and torrent books or just Google to find their respective .pdf's without paying after they see the price tag at the campus store/amazon/ebay.

Re: Free Springer math books

#62

Post by bewe42 »

thebear wrote: post #45

Guess there won't be a royalty check for me this year. http://tinyurl.com/hmwpf8e I'm totally fine with having our book available for free; actually, I prefer it that way. Yet I find it a bit odd that Springer never even notified any of the authors. I suppose as copyright owners, they can do that.

I'm in the process of writing a book also. I'm wondering if an author has no saying in this. Can a publisher just decide: I give your book away for free?

What does this mean for publishing in general? 10 years is not much time for good technical books.

Re: Free Springer math books

#64

Post by EliRivers »

noobermin wrote: post #41
EliRivers wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completed a masters in physics my first time around, and over a decade later decided to do a masters in maths (which I completed). On my own experiences, if you're willing to put the hours in, the prospects are pretty good. Maths isn't magic, and I found there wasn't much at the standard masters level that couldn't be at least managed (if not mastered) with significant but not superhuman effort. I've no idea about…

May I ask further, what field? Is it more applied or theoretical (I guess that is answered by the field).

Given the context of this thread, let me say my chosen specialisations in the Physics were generally not towards the frightening mathematics end of the spectrum (and without naming specific subjects, the lowest score I achieved in my entire life on any exam was in a maths heavy exam in the final year of my formal physics education). I was not a mathematical wunderkind.

Re: Free Springer math books

#65

Post by thebear »

bewe42 wrote: post #62
thebear wrote: post #45

Guess there won't be a royalty check for me this year. http://tinyurl.com/hmwpf8e I'm totally fine with having our book available for free; actually, I prefer it that way. Yet I find it a bit odd that Springer never even notified any of the authors. I suppose as copyright owners, they can do that.

I'm in the process of writing a book also. I'm wondering if an author has no saying in this. Can a publisher just decide: I give your book away for free? What does this mean for publishing in general? 10 years is not much time for good technical books.

It's been so long that I can't even find the agreement that I signed with Springer back then. But I would assume that there was something in there that allows them to do what they did. And since it's more than fine by me that the book is now available for free, I don't care. But if you're concerned about the issue, then, in my opinion, there is only one course of action: have your agreement with the publisher reviewed by a lawyer before you sign it.

Re: Free Springer math books

#66

Post by frik »

thebear wrote: post #45

Guess there won't be a royalty check for me this year. http://tinyurl.com/hmwpf8e I'm totally fine with having our book available for free; actually, I prefer it that way. Yet I find it a bit odd that Springer never even notified any of the authors. I suppose as copyright owners, they can do that.

> I'm totally fine with having our book available for free

Really? It's Dec 31th, so you managed to make the book non-free again.

Re: Free Springer math books

#67

Post by frik »

thebear wrote: post #65
bewe42 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the process of writing a book also. I'm wondering if an author has no saying in this. Can a publisher just decide: I give your book away for free? What does this mean for publishing in general? 10 years is not much time for good technical books.

It's been so long that I can't even find the agreement that I signed with Springer back then. But I would assume that there was something in there that allows them to do what they did. And since it's more than fine by me that the book is now available for free, I don't care. But if you're concerned about the issue, then, in my opinion, there is only one course of action: have your agreement with the publisher reviewe…

You appearently cared so much to make it non-free again. It's now $69.95 instead of a free PDF.

Re: Free Springer math books

#68

Post by jcpeterson »

digler999 wrote: post #12
sdenton4 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like Springer runs a open publishing model for books, with a fee charged to the author, as usual . My guess would be that they are seeding a bunch of these classic books to increase visibility of the open publishing scheme. And anyway, there's probably genlib copies of most of these floating around anyways...

there's an excellent torrent of springer books out there, about 12gb.

Where?

Re: Free Springer math books

#69

Post by jcpeterson »

jlarocco wrote: post #23
tomtoise wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to scrape these programatically? I feel like it'd be a useful repository to have stashed away for whatever future reason.

Why? I can understand downloading a few that look interesting, or asking for permission to mirror them, but blindly downloading all of them seems like hoarding.

And...they are no longer available. Hope someone saved them.

Re: Free Springer math books

#70

Post by i336_ »

digler999 wrote: post #12
sdenton4 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like Springer runs a open publishing model for books, with a fee charged to the author, as usual . My guess would be that they are seeding a bunch of these classic books to increase visibility of the open publishing scheme. And anyway, there's probably genlib copies of most of these floating around anyways...

there's an excellent torrent of springer books out there, about 12gb.

I'd appreciate some pointers to where this is too. I've tried some obvious keywords but it looks like I need to be very specific. My email's in my profile.
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