Discussion:
Best way to learn OCaml?
(too old to reply)
kj
2009-10-03 19:11:34 UTC
Permalink
How come it is so hard to find a good, affordable book to learn
OCaml from?

"OCaml for Scientists" has gotten good reviews, but I don't like
to buy such an expensive book without at least flipping through it
a bit, which seems to be impossible for this title (for me at
least). "Practical OCaml" has been thoroughly panned in Amazon.
"The Objective Caml Programming Language" by Rentsch is listed by
Amazon as due to appear on 09/05/2008, more than a year ago, but
it remains unpublished. The book by Chailloux, Manoury and Pagano
("Developpement d'applications avec Objective Caml") has been
out-of-print for a while, both the original in French and the
translation to English, and used copies, if one can find them, sell
for about 200 USD.

Sheesh! I look at "Real World Haskell" with a strange sort of
envy, wishing that there were something as good and affordable for
OCaml...

Any suggestions?

TIA!

kynn
A.L.
2009-10-03 19:26:45 UTC
Permalink
Post by kj
How come it is so hard to find a good, affordable book to learn
OCaml from?
"OCaml for Scientists" has gotten good reviews, but I don't like
to buy such an expensive book without at least flipping through it
a bit, which seems to be impossible for this title (for me at
least). "Practical OCaml" has been thoroughly panned in Amazon.
"The Objective Caml Programming Language" by Rentsch is listed by
Amazon as due to appear on 09/05/2008, more than a year ago, but
it remains unpublished. The book by Chailloux, Manoury and Pagano
("Developpement d'applications avec Objective Caml") has been
out-of-print for a while, both the original in French and the
translation to English, and used copies, if one can find them, sell
for about 200 USD.
Sheesh! I look at "Real World Haskell" with a strange sort of
envy, wishing that there were something as good and affordable for
OCaml...
Any suggestions?
TIA!
kynn
What about this:

http://www.cs.caltech.edu/courses/cs134/cs134b/book.pdf

and what about this

http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/ocaml-ora-book.pdf

A.L.
kj
2009-10-03 20:42:30 UTC
Permalink
Post by A.L.
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/courses/cs134/cs134b/book.pdf
and what about this
http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/ocaml-ora-book.pdf
That's great! Thanks!

kj
Jon Harrop
2009-10-04 00:02:38 UTC
Permalink
Post by kj
How come it is so hard to find a good, affordable book to learn
OCaml from?
Writing a good book takes many months. Authors want adequate recompense for
that work. So books on fringe subjects like OCaml cost more because they
will sell fewer copies.
Post by kj
"OCaml for Scientists" has gotten good reviews, but I don't like
to buy such an expensive book without at least flipping through it
a bit, which seems to be impossible for this title (for me at
least).
For example, I wrote OCaml for Scientists in 4 months. Had I used a trade
publisher like O'Reilly I would have received about £1 per copy sold and
they would have sold about 4,000 copies. Instead, I receive about £60 per
copy and have sold about 400 copies, i.e. made 6x more profit.

My book F# for Scientists was published through John Wiley & Sons. The
overheads of dealing with a publisher added a lot of extra work and 6
months of delay in printing. I rewrote the book, renamed it F# for
Technical Computing and am publishing it myself:

http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/fsharp_for_technical_computing/

This new book has not even been out for 3 weeks but it has already pulled in
over half as much money for me as the Wiley book did in a year.
Post by kj
Sheesh! I look at "Real World Haskell" with a strange sort of
envy, wishing that there were something as good and affordable for
OCaml...
What little I read of that book turned out to be wrong:

http://flyingfrogblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-on-haskells-hash-table-problems.html

About 40 negative reviews of it were posted on Reddit.
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
kj
2009-10-04 01:27:54 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by kj
How come it is so hard to find a good, affordable book to learn
OCaml from?
Writing a good book takes many months. Authors want adequate recompense for
that work. So books on fringe subjects like OCaml cost more because they
will sell fewer copies.
You know more about the economics of publishing than I'll ever
know. All I can say is that there's got to be a lot more to this
story than your analysis suggests, since it is far easier to find
books on other "fringe subjects" like Erlang, Scala, Clojure,
Scheme, even Lua, than on OCaml.

BTW, FWIW, the price of your book is not deal breaker for me; it's
the fact that there's no convenient way for me to examine the book
before purchasing it; I've even requested it via interlibrary loan
from my local university library, and they can't get hold of a
single copy. Maybe your business model is a case of premature
(revenue) optimization? If my experience is at all representative,
I can tell you that the sheer obscurity of your book is costing
you sales.

kynn
A.L.
2009-10-04 04:12:48 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by kj
How come it is so hard to find a good, affordable book to learn
OCaml from?
Writing a good book takes many months. Authors want adequate recompense for
that work. So books on fringe subjects like OCaml cost more because they
will sell fewer copies.
Post by kj
"OCaml for Scientists" has gotten good reviews, but I don't like
to buy such an expensive book without at least flipping through it
a bit, which seems to be impossible for this title (for me at
least).
Sorry, your "economics" is broken. I checked your web page; your
prices for books are astroniomical. Although I could afford to buy
them, I will never do.

A.L.
Jon Harrop
2009-10-04 14:50:56 UTC
Permalink
Post by A.L.
Sorry, your "economics" is broken. I checked your web page; your
prices for books are astroniomical. Although I could afford to buy
them, I will never do.
For people using the subject matter to earn money in industry, the cost of
the book is tiny compared to the amount of money it saves them.
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
A.L.
2009-10-04 15:14:39 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by A.L.
Sorry, your "economics" is broken. I checked your web page; your
prices for books are astroniomical. Although I could afford to buy
them, I will never do.
For people using the subject matter to earn money in industry, the cost of
the book is tiny compared to the amount of money it saves them.
"F# to earn money in industry"?... You are kidding yourself. It will
take next 20 years for F# or whatever to reach the level that "people
will be making money on F#". If ever.

Market does not exist. I don't care about Scala, F# and such. Yes, I
wild like to know about them, but for curiosity not for money. If
there are no affordable books, I will ignore them.

People have no clue that such thing like F# do exist. I lerned about
F# from Willey book catalog and from the bookstore, not from your web
page.

Generally, in business there are two approaches:

a. Market is very small, therefore we sell little and this what we
sell is expensive therefore market stays stable

or

b. We create the market by selling cheap and maybe giving away in the
first period

Remember the Turbo Pascal busines phenomenon. That time, Pascal
compiler from Microsoft was about $500 per copy. Borland started
selling for $50 per copy. In everybody's opinion, this was insane. It
was not. They sold milions of copies, eliminating Microsoft Pascal
from the market.

Maybe you should study business a bit?

A.L.
Jon Harrop
2009-10-04 16:40:40 UTC
Permalink
Post by A.L.
Post by Jon Harrop
Sorry, your "economics" is broken...
My books are our largest revenue streams.
Post by A.L.
Post by Jon Harrop
For people using the subject matter to earn money in industry, the cost of
the book is tiny compared to the amount of money it saves them.
"F# to earn money in industry"?... You are kidding yourself.
We use F# to earn money in industry.
Post by A.L.
It will
take next 20 years for F# or whatever to reach the level that "people
will be making money on F#". If ever.
F# will peak in a few years and be dead in 20 years.
Post by A.L.
Market does not exist.
How do you explain our revenues?
Post by A.L.
I don't care about Scala, F# and such. Yes, I
wild like to know about them, but for curiosity not for money. If
there are no affordable books, I will ignore them.
People have no clue that such thing like F# do exist. I lerned about
F# from Willey book catalog and from the bookstore, not from your web
page.
a. Market is very small, therefore we sell little and this what we
sell is expensive therefore market stays stable
or
b. We create the market by selling cheap and maybe giving away in the
first period
Remember the Turbo Pascal busines phenomenon. That time, Pascal
compiler from Microsoft was about $500 per copy. Borland started
selling for $50 per copy. In everybody's opinion, this was insane. It
was not. They sold milions of copies, eliminating Microsoft Pascal
from the market.
How would you describe the positions of Microsoft ($60bn revenue) and
Borland ($0.172bn revenue) today?
Post by A.L.
Maybe you should study business a bit?
Maybe you should study our business a bit.
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
Casey Hawthorne
2009-10-04 15:18:49 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by A.L.
Sorry, your "economics" is broken. I checked your web page; your
prices for books are astroniomical. Although I could afford to buy
them, I will never do.
For people using the subject matter to earn money in industry, the cost of
the book is tiny compared to the amount of money it saves them.
True, if the book actually saves them time and they can not readily
get the same information better organized from a few web sites.

You've already pointed out that some books, e.g. Real World Haskell
have several negative comments on reddit.

--
Regards,
Casey
Erik de Castro Lopo
2009-10-04 23:56:27 UTC
Permalink
Post by Casey Hawthorne
True, if the book actually saves them time and they can not readily
get the same information better organized from a few web sites.
You've already pointed out that some books, e.g. Real World Haskell
have several negative comments on reddit.
Reddit is hardly a good place to find reviews of RWH. On Mazon there
are 17 * 5 star and 3 * 4 start ratings out of a total of 21.

I own RWH and think its a fine book, not perfect, but better than a
sizable majority of programming langauge books I've looked at over the
20 odd years I've been coding.

Erik
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/
Jon Harrop
2009-10-05 01:17:26 UTC
Permalink
Post by Casey Hawthorne
True, if the book actually saves them time and they can not readily
get the same information better organized from a few web sites.
You've already pointed out that some books, e.g. Real World Haskell
have several negative comments on reddit.
Reddit is hardly a good place to find reviews of RWH. On Mazon there are
17 * 5 star and 3 * 4 start ratings out of a total of 21.
Why would you believe Amazon reviews and not Reddit reviews and how do you
explain the huge discrepancy in rating (40 negative reviews on Reddit, 40%
negative reviews on amazon.co.uk)?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1GGVBVIC73P6Y/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R28XKFNGOJS8P/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
Paul Rubin
2009-10-05 01:27:37 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Why would you believe Amazon reviews and not Reddit reviews and how do you
explain the huge discrepancy in rating (40 negative reviews on Reddit, 40%
negative reviews on amazon.co.uk)?
Gee, I wonder if there might be someone in the UK with a vendetta
against this book. Now that I think of it, somebody does come to
mind.
Jon Harrop
2009-10-05 14:46:34 UTC
Permalink
Post by Paul Rubin
Post by Jon Harrop
Why would you believe Amazon reviews and not Reddit reviews and how do
you explain the huge discrepancy in rating (40 negative reviews on
Reddit, 40% negative reviews on amazon.co.uk)?
Gee, I wonder if there might be someone in the UK with a vendetta
against this book. Now that I think of it, somebody does come to
mind.
John Malkovich?
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
Erik de Castro Lopo
2009-10-05 02:02:14 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Why would you believe Amazon reviews and not Reddit reviews and how do you
explain the huge discrepancy in rating (40 negative reviews on Reddit,
Lets look at one:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8btml/is_real_world_haskell_really_a_good_book/c08surd

By the following user:

http://www.reddit.com/user/pureza

That a user who has only ever made 3 comments on any subject across all of reddit,
and all of those comments were 5 months ago and about RWH. That absolutely screams
of a Jon Harrop sock puppet. For more on the Jon Harrop sock puppet see things like
this:

http://www.reddit.com/tb/6xl16
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8azn3/jon_harrop_apparently_makes_another_sock_puppet/

Back to the issue of RWH, other comments in that thread may not be all glowing
positivity, but few (other than obvious sock puppet opinions like the one above)
pan RWH anywhere near as much as "Practical Ocaml" was panned.

Erik
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/
Erik de Castro Lopo
2009-10-05 02:08:12 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Why would you believe Amazon reviews and not Reddit reviews and how do you
explain the huge discrepancy in rating (40 negative reviews on Reddit,
I should have mentioned of course that the RWH reviewers on Amazon give what
at least looks like a real name, and that many of those reviewers have
reviewed other related and unrelated items again reducing the chance that they
are sock puppets like the ones Jon Harrop uses.

Erik
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/
Jon Harrop
2009-10-05 14:18:48 UTC
Permalink
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
I should have mentioned of course that the RWH reviewers on Amazon give
what at least looks like a real name,
calvinnme "Texan refugee"?
Unknown Comic?
zbrown "programming polyglot"?
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
and that many of those reviewers have reviewed other related and unrelated
items again reducing the chance that they are sock puppets like the ones
Jon Harrop uses.
calvinnme "Texan refugee" has reviewed thousands of products on Amazon
(which is orders of magnitude more than most customers) and gave almost all
of them five stars. You're saying that makes his review credible?!
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
Erik de Castro Lopo
2009-10-05 21:34:53 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
I should have mentioned of course that the RWH reviewers on Amazon give
what at least looks like a real name,
calvinnme "Texan refugee"?
Unknown Comic?
zbrown "programming polyglot"?
3 anonymous (and possibly bogus) reviewers out of 21? Thats not too bad.

Erik
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/
Jon Harrop
2009-10-06 13:13:25 UTC
Permalink
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
I should have mentioned of course that the RWH reviewers on Amazon give
what at least looks like a real name,
calvinnme "Texan refugee"?
Unknown Comic?
zbrown "programming polyglot"?
3 anonymous (and possibly bogus) reviewers out of 21? Thats not too bad.
Probably no better or worse than the Reddit reviews.
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
Jon Harrop
2009-10-05 14:42:02 UTC
Permalink
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
Post by Jon Harrop
Why would you believe Amazon reviews and not Reddit reviews and how do
you explain the huge discrepancy in rating (40 negative reviews on
Reddit,
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8btml/is_real_world_haskell_really_a_good_book/c08surd
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.reddit.com/user/pureza
That a user who has only ever made 3 comments on any subject across all of
reddit, and all of those comments were 5 months ago and about RWH. That
absolutely screams of a Jon Harrop sock puppet.
No chance pureza on Reddit is pureza on LtU and pureza on the F# Hub who is
Luís Pureza (MSc) from Portugal in real life?
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
For more on the Jon Harrop
http://www.reddit.com/tb/6xl16
That is someone else also claiming that I maintain sock puppets.
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8azn3/jon_harrop_apparently_makes_another_sock_puppet/

Now you're citing me citing someone else claiming that I maintain sock
puppets. You realise I posted their claim precisely because it was so
absurd as to be funny, right?
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
Back to the issue of RWH, other comments in that thread may not be all
glowing positivity,
No kidding. Forty negative reviews of Real World Haskell on Reddit alone.
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
but few (other than obvious sock puppet opinions like
the one above) pan RWH anywhere near as much as "Practical Ocaml" was
panned.
But surely the negative reviews of Practical OCaml were also written by me?
After all, that book actually is a competitor to my own OCaml book whereas
Real World Haskell is completely irrelevant for me...
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
Erik de Castro Lopo
2009-10-05 21:45:07 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
No chance pureza on Reddit is pureza on LtU and pureza on the F# Hub who is
Luís Pureza (MSc) from Portugal in real life?
Quite possibly.

Your history of sock puppetry made me jump to conclusions.
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
For more on the Jon Harrop
http://www.reddit.com/tb/6xl16
That is someone else also claiming that I maintain sock puppets.
I think thats a fair accussation. That user has posted about 20 links,
and made 5 comments. The vast majority of links and comments point
to your material. Either thats you or you have a stalker.
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
Back to the issue of RWH, other comments in that thread may not be all
glowing positivity,
No kidding. Forty negative reviews of Real World Haskell on Reddit alone.
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
but few (other than obvious sock puppet opinions like
the one above) pan RWH anywhere near as much as "Practical Ocaml" was
panned.
But surely the negative reviews of Practical OCaml were also written by me?
After all, that book actually is a competitor to my own OCaml book whereas
Real World Haskell is completely irrelevant for me...
The Practial Ocaml book probably does actually suck. RWH definitelty does
not suck.

Erik
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/
Jon Harrop
2009-10-06 13:12:53 UTC
Permalink
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
Post by Jon Harrop
No chance pureza on Reddit is pureza on LtU and pureza on the F# Hub who
is Luís Pureza (MSc) from Portugal in real life?
Quite possibly.
Your history of sock puppetry made me jump to conclusions.
You might want to re-examine that "history".
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
but few (other than obvious sock puppet opinions like
the one above) pan RWH anywhere near as much as "Practical Ocaml" was
panned.
But surely the negative reviews of Practical OCaml were also written by
me? After all, that book actually is a competitor to my own OCaml book
whereas Real World Haskell is completely irrelevant for me...
The Practial Ocaml book probably does actually suck. RWH definitelty does
not suck.
I get the impression from the reviews that Haskell noobs were much more
frustrated with the book than seasoned Haskell programmers.
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
Michel Alexandre Salim
2009-10-06 19:32:05 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
Post by Jon Harrop
No chance pureza on Reddit is pureza on LtU and pureza on the F# Hub who
is Luís Pureza (MSc) from Portugal in real life?
Quite possibly.
Your history of sock puppetry made me jump to conclusions.
You might want to re-examine that "history".
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
but few (other than obvious sock puppet opinions like
the one above) pan RWH anywhere near as much as "Practical Ocaml" was
panned.
But surely the negative reviews of Practical OCaml were also written by
me? After all, that book actually is a competitor to my own OCaml book
whereas Real World Haskell is completely irrelevant for me...
The Practial Ocaml book probably does actually suck. RWH definitelty does
not suck.
I get the impression from the reviews that Haskell noobs were much more
frustrated with the book than seasoned Haskell programmers.
Is that the fault of the book, or of Haskell (and other pure, lazy-
evaluation languages) being more "different" for more users? FWIW, I
find RWH to be quite accessible, and while not on the same level of
clarity as Hudak's Haskell School of Expressions, RWH is more
practical for most purposes.

Besides, why do we have to mention another (non-ML, even!) programming
language, when the topic is about OCaml?

Regards,

--
Michel
Jon Harrop
2009-10-07 01:47:17 UTC
Permalink
Post by Michel Alexandre Salim
Post by Jon Harrop
I get the impression from the reviews that Haskell noobs were much more
frustrated with the book than seasoned Haskell programmers.
Is that the fault of the book, or of Haskell (and other pure, lazy-
evaluation languages) being more "different" for more users?
Several reviewers complained about the concepts and examples being
interspersed, which is interesting. They wanted a book suitable for both
cover-to-cover reading and reference. For reference, they did not want to
have to study a previous example.
Post by Michel Alexandre Salim
FWIW, I find RWH to be quite accessible, and while not on the same level
of clarity as Hudak's Haskell School of Expressions, RWH is more
practical for most purposes.
I read Paul Hudak's book in 2007 when I started looking at Haskell. Although
it was of some academic interest, I could not see any practical
applications for what it described. What little I have read of Real World
Haskell seemed to be more of the same except that it adds factually
incorrect advice. Nothing leapt out at me as being useful.
Post by Michel Alexandre Salim
Besides, why do we have to mention another (non-ML, even!) programming
language, when the topic is about OCaml?
I believe this started with "what is OCaml's equivalent of Real World
Haskell?", to which I replied "Practical OCaml".
--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy Ltd.
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/?u
Paul Rubin
2009-10-06 19:37:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by Erik de Castro Lopo
The Practial Ocaml book probably does actually suck. RWH definitelty does
not suck.
I get the impression from the reviews that Haskell noobs were much more
frustrated with the book than seasoned Haskell programmers.
I was somewhat out of the raw-newbie phase when I read the book, but
well short of being a seasoned Haskell programmer. I liked it a lot.

For complete noobs, http://learnyouahaskell might be a better place to
start.

I spoke with one of the authors of RWH and he told me that the book's
main goal was to pull together stuff that previously was accessible
only in academic papers scattered all over the place, making it
possible to become proficient in the language without having to find
out about and chase down umpteen different papers. I think it did
pretty well for that, up to some intermediate level. There are also
more advanced topics that it barely touches or doesn't touch.
Erik de Castro Lopo
2009-10-05 02:50:44 UTC
Permalink
I'm waiting for a compile inside a very slow qemu VM, so I've got a little
time on my hands.
Post by Jon Harrop
Why would you believe Amazon reviews and not Reddit reviews and how do you
explain the huge discrepancy in rating (40 negative reviews on Reddit, 40%
negative reviews on amazon.co.uk)?
40% out of a sample of 5! Nice science Jon!

Amazon uk has a total of 5 reviews (contrast to 21 reviews for the amazon.com
Post by Jon Harrop
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1GGVBVIC73P6Y/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R28XKFNGOJS8P/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Interestingly, the first has re-editted his review and says:

EDIT: After having read some parts of the book a second (and third!) time,
I have a few more good points to add. Some of the sections on monads are
quite well-written actually. I also like that the authors pay attention to
good, general programming practices such as "encapsulation". This is essential
when writing scalable and realistic programs - no matter what language you use.

I still stand by my initial review. But I feel I was a little to harsh in the
rating. So I'd like to give it one more star... but it doesn't seem like
Amazon will let me do that. :/


Erik
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/
kj
2009-10-04 21:16:13 UTC
Permalink
Post by Jon Harrop
Post by A.L.
Sorry, your "economics" is broken. I checked your web page; your
prices for books are astroniomical. Although I could afford to buy
them, I will never do.
For people using the subject matter to earn money in industry, the cost of
the book is tiny compared to the amount of money it saves them.
Allow me to reiterate that the issue of your book's prices is
secondary to the issue of its availability. Of course, the higher
the price the fewer the buyers, even within the segment of those
who want to make money from the book's subject matter, that's just
microeconomics 101.

The bigger problem, as I see it, is that you've made your OCaml
book inordinately inaccessible to potential buyers. Your book
doesn't even have a proper ISBN!!! It is therefore practically
"dark matter" in the book universe. Libraries don't have it.
Bookstores don't have it. To think that this is the way to profit
from a book is absolutely insane.

I own and am very happy with several self published and rather
pricey titles, such as Gilbert Strang's Intro to Applied Math, or
Edward Tufte's books on graphic representations of data, or Michael
Spivak's crazy series on differential geometry, the list goes on.
One can find *all* of them on Amazon.com (for example), even though
they're self-published. Why isn't your OCaml book???

Or how about trying a more writer-friendly publisher, like College
Publications (http://www.collegepublications.co.uk)? Or a service
like Lulu's (www.lulu.com)?

If what you want to do is make money from your books, you're shooting
yourself in the foot bigtime. Wise up already.

Best luck,

kynn
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