It looks like I’m off the hook and can relax (after a few months of rewriting/correcting/learning LaTeX-quirks). To all of you NeverEndingBooks readers : the bookproject has ended and will appear sometime this fall. It will be around 600 pages thick and cost just under 100$. This is about 4 times the amount NeverEndingBook-ers paid over at Lulu.com. To all (?!) those who did : treasure the two volumes, they will become (extremely rare) collectors’ items, one fine day. Here is the final cover-design :
Compare it to the covers produced two years ago by the NeverEndingBooks-design department (thanks again Jan and the rest of the crew).
The final fight was over the promotional material. The copywriters did include the captivating sentence “A Novel Approach to Difficult Cases in Mathematics and Physics”… Here’s my reply
I realize Im a difficult (some say hopeless) case, but there is little point advertising this. Here a few alternatives that may require spicing-up
“A gentle introduction to one of mathematics’ (and even physics’) hottest topics”
“A novel approach to noncommutative geometry”
“Get rid of singularities by going noncommutative!”
“The first readable text on an over-hyped topic…”
etc. etc.
I can do better if I have to, so please tell me and I’ll open up a bottle of wine.
Whatever you do, please remove the difficult cases-sentence from all material.
atb+apologies :: lieven.
UPDATE (august 1st) : if you want to order the book for your university-library, have a look at the promo flyer. All my suggestions (apart from the last one) are included…
One final comment about all of this. The project started as a bookproject with the AMS in 1999 and was abandoned (for a variety of reasons, all of them only relevant to myself) sometime early 2002.
Here’s the one thing that will hurt for some time to come. I wanted to dedicate the book to “the women in my life : my mother, Ann, Gitte&Bente”. Unfortunately, my mother will never see the book. The current dedication is :
This book is dedicated to the women in my life
Simonne Stevens (1926-2004), Ann, Gitte&Bente
geometry, latex, lulu, noncommutative
9 comments
Posted in general, geometry
Written on Wed, 18 July 2007 at 10:38 pm
Tags: geometry, latex, lulu, noncommutative
If you liked this post, then consider subscribing to our full RSS feed.
July 19th, 2007 at 12:31 am
Fantastic! Congratulations. Unfortunately, I don’t have $100 to spend on books, but I promise your book is very high on my wish list.
July 19th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Congrats! Now I regret I didn’t buy the lulu’s books, was waiting to get Geert’s one about NC-Poisson included in the package
Kinda expensive, the new one, but I hope I’ll find some unused budget in my dept account for this year.
Now, relax, and have a well deserved holiday!
July 22nd, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Congratulations to you!
I guess it will be a very happy thing for you to see these books on your desk : books are like poem, which express your viewpoint on what mathemtics should look like!
July 25th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
I did not think first of Geert van de Weyer when reading the javier comment.
I thought of Geert Jan Olser who cowrote: a - ‘Dynamic Noncooperative Game Theory’ with Tamer Basar
b - ‘Max Plus at Work: …’ with Bernd Heidergott and Jacob van der Woude
Since Game Theory and Geometry are both mathematics, intuitively there should be some rigorous relationship [beyond my present ability to demonstrate].
I would be stunned if this relation could be as simple as: commutative ~ cooperative or noncommutative ~ noncooperative?
How does the historical Ergodic Theory of von Neumann relate to Nash terminology?
July 28th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Congratulations on the book! Does it mean the lulu version is no longer available (that is, until the Chapman & Hall version is out)? BTW, was your experience with Lulu.com a good one?
Best, Christine
July 29th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Christine, Ive made lulu/neverendingbooks available again. My experiences with lulu were good. It is easy to set up an account and if there is someone around you good at Latex and Photoshop you can produce a good-looking book at about 1/4th of the price at a regular publishing house. 3 caveats however : 1) it seems like a good idea to get a cheap version out for students, but one needs to have a credit-card to buy and most students dont have one. 2) they used to offer free shipping for orders over 25$ (which partly was the reason why we offered the 2 books at a price just over 25$) but it seems they have changed this recently. 3) and this is the crucial bit : math-books are not meant to be bought by individuals, they have to be bought by university-libraries who put them on a shelf in the hope that someone someday will browse through it… unfortunately this means IRL-shelves rather than virtual lulu-shelves and whereas most libraries have standing orders with regular publishing firms (or at least get their regular offerings), none of them browses through lulu so it takes a special effort of someone to get a lulu-book ordered… this is the principal reason why i gave in at the end.
August 1st, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Hi Lieven,
Thank you for your response. I’m thinking about purchasing your books. What are the pre-requisites that you suggest in order to be able to follow the material of your books?
Best, Christine
August 1st, 2007 at 1:42 pm
BTW, from the lulu site, the shipping rate to Brazil (for sending the two volumes) is about $15.00.
Christine
February 7th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Pre-Paid Wireless Plans End Outrageous Bills…
One of the latest crazes from cell phone service providers is the pre-paid wireless plan. This type of plan offers many benefits that are normally unavailable from a standard cell phone plan. Pre-paid wireless plans represent a flexibility that many pe…