Comment by mixedmath
6 years ago
Thank you for your book. I applaud all sorts of free texts.
I notice that there is an option to buy your book, and perhaps there are other options to somehow get money to you. I was wondering if you felt comfortable revealing approximately how much money has come to you as a result of your (donated) labours?
I occasionally get contributions via the PayPal button on the book's web page. I use them, among other things, to fund going to conferences. I say "conferences" but really there has only been one (very, very good) conference on Inquiry-Based Learning at Westfield State, in connection with my IBL Proofs text. To be fair, the contribute button has only been up for a year-ish.
I sell hard copies on Amazon. Well, really Orthogonal Publishing L3C sells them. This is a limited-profit company that Lon Mitchell set up to publish Free texts. Naturally we round the price up rather than down so there is some money. Since Amazon's price, $21.95, is not far from the price of media, you can guess that there is not much money. I'm reluctant to quote exact numbers but the dollar amount is not much, especially per hour.
However, my school, St Michael's College, has the wisdom to give me professional credit for the work so that counts for a lot.
Thank you for letting me know. It's good to hear that St Michael's College values your work, too.
Cheers.