amazon

Antenna theory notes available on amazon

June 8, 2020 ece1229, math and physics play , ,

I’ve received my copy of my bound Antenna Theory notes today:

I wanted a copy for myself, but don’t expect that anybody else would buy this particular notes compilation.  The course was taught from slides, and it was almost impossible to take good notes, so these aren’t much good without also having the (excellent) course text (Balanis.)

The two possible reasons to buy or download this notes compilation would be:

  • to peruse the solved problems, or
  • for the geometric algebra and tensor formalism exploration that followed from wondering how to deal with the magnetic sources that are used in this subject.

These notes are available for free in PDF form.  Should somebody other than me want to purchase their own copy on paper, it can be found on amazon for $8.50 USD.  I’ve set the price as close to amazon’s absolute minimum required price of $8.28, while also rounding up to a tidy multiple of $0.25

I find it curious that amazon requires a higher price (and royalty) just by virtue of enabling expanded distribution.  Since I wanted to buy my copy locally in the Canadian amazon marketplace (amazon.ca) to utilize my local prime shipping subscription, I had to set the price higher for all markets, including the US market (amazon.com).  Because shipping from the US to Canada is so high, it is cheaper for me to buy an aftermarket version using prime shipping from Canada, than to utilize kindle-direct-publishing’s option of buying an author draft (which would only be cost effective if I lived in the USA.)

 

EDIT: I misunderstood what Expanded Distribution (ED) meant.  This is to sell to markets that are outside of the 6 or so official amazon marketplaces (USA, Canada, UK, Germany, …, Japan).  I’ll probably take this book off of ED and lower the price instead.

A price increase for Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers

May 28, 2020 Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers , , , ,

As of this week (end of May 2020), I raised the price of the black and white version of my Geometric Algebra book slightly (from $12 to $14.50 USD).  I say slightly, despite the 17% price increase, because the price is still pretty low from an absolute value perspective, as the markup I’d added to the minimum price was fairly small.  This price increase was an experiment in response to a reseller (SuperBookDeals) buying copies at $12 and then reselling them at higher prices.  For some reason amazon lists the higher price reseller copies before their own kindle-direct-publishing version, so a buyer had to go out of their way to find the lowest priced version.

I wouldn’t care if resellers undercut my list price, and then got a preferential listing from amazon.  The fact that this reseller doesn’t play this game with the color version of the book, which has a much higher printing cost (I haven’t changed my price for that, and am still selling it for $40 USD), suggests to me that I’d set the price too low for the black and white version.

If you are interested in a copy of the book, but don’t like the new higher price, please note that the (color) PDF version is still available for free.

I may drop the price back to the original $12 later, but for now I’m going to charge $14.50, and am curious to see how the pricing game plays out.

Note that a temporary side effect of me having changed the price is that SuperBookDeals appears to have dropped their price of one of their listings below $12 (my original price) to clear out their stock. Amazon also appears to be offering a couple copies at the old $12 price, which now lists as a sale price.

 

Amazon’s kindle-direct now has Canadian manufacturing

December 14, 2019 Geometric Algebra for Electrical Engineers , ,

As a “kdp” author, I got an email about new Canadian manufacturing for kindle-direct orders (i.e. my Geometric Algebra book and various UofT physics and engineering class notes compilations.)

Here’s a fragment of that email:

“We’re excited to announce paperback manufacturing in Canada! This enables new features for KDP authors, including:

    • Faster shipping to your readers in Canada. Manufacturing in Canada enables FREE Two-Day Shipping for Prime Members.

…

Please note that, as of today, proof copies and author orders for authors in Canada will still be printed and shipped from the US.”

With the low price that I set my book prices at, paying just the US shipping for an “author proof” has been about the same as ordering a normal copy, so now there will really be no point to ordering proofs anymore.

“Products related to this item” ?

May 26, 2019 Incoherent ramblings , , ,

I’m looking for belt lube to cure the “E2 lube belt” error on my Tempo 632T model treadmill.  Amazon has some strange ideas about related items

Notes for Quantum Field Theory I (phy2403) now available in paper on amazon

May 2, 2019 phy2403 , ,

My notes (423 pages, 6″x9″) from the fall 2018 session of the University of Toronto Quantum Field Theory I course (PHY2403), taught by Prof. Erich Poppitz, are now available on amazon.com (through kindle-direct-publishing, formerly createspace).

These notes are available in three forms, two free, and one paper:

  • On amazon (kindle-direct-publishing) for $11 USD,
  • As a free PDF,
  • As latex sources (, makefiles, figures, …) to build/modify yourself.

This book is dedicated to dad.

Warning to students

These notes are no longer redacted and include whatever portions of the problem set 1-4 solutions I completed, errors and all.  In the event that any of the problem sets are recycled for future iterations of the course, students who are taking the course (all mature grad students pursuing science for the love of it, not for grades) are expected to act responsibly, and produce their own solutions, within the constraints provided by the professor.

Topics

The official course outline included:

  1. Introduction: Energy and distance scales; units and conventions. Uncertainty relations in the relativistic domain and the need for multiple particle description.
  2. Canonical quantization. Free scalar field theory.
  3. Symmetries and conservation laws.
  4. Interacting fields: Feynman diagrams and the S matrix; decay widths and phase space.
  5. Spin 1/2 fields: Spinor representations, Dirac and Weyl spinors, Dirac equation. Quantizing fermi fields and statistics.
  6. Vector fields and Quantum electrodynamics.