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Haskell Functional Programming Bookstore

John Meacham has set up a print-on-demand bookstore for Haskell-related books at CafePress. There are only a few books there at the moment, but they tend to be things that are otherwise out of print, for instance Simon Peyton-Jones and David Lester's Implementing Functional Languages. In this particular case, Amazon has one used copy for $204, but you can get a brand new one from the Haskell bookstore for $18.50.

By Bryn Keller at 2004-07-23 13:18 | Misc Books | other blogs | 10395 reads

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Copyrights?

Is this thing approved by the copyright owners?

By Ehud Lamm at Fri, 2004-07-23 17:17 | login or register to post comments

well, he got approval for the

well, he got approval for the image on the back cover, so i would guess he could approval for the book contents too ;o)

By andrew cooke at Sun, 2004-07-25 21:49 | login or register to post comments

Details on the Haskell Wiki

The details are on the Haskell Wiki:
http://haskell.org/hawiki/HaskellBookstore

I actually bought the aforementioned book from CafePress and was pleased with the quality.

How about setting up a CafePress store to sell Lambda The Ultimate tote bags ?

By Nick Main at Fri, 2004-07-23 17:29 | login or register to post comments

LtU merchandise

How about setting up a CafePress store to sell Lambda The Ultimate tote bags?

When I first experimented with cafepress I set up a line of LtU items (no tote bags then, so it was mostly t shirts and sweaters). They had the tag line ("The Programming Languages Weblog") on the front, and the URL on the back. Not one of these was sold...

But we can try again, if there's interest.

By Ehud Lamm at Sat, 2004-07-24 10:30 | login or register to post comments

Tote bags

I wasn't entirely serious :)

By Nick Main at Mon, 2004-07-26 00:27 | login or register to post comments

re Tote Bags

Me too.

I used it to experiment with cafepress, which seemed like a cool concept at the time.

It would be even more amusing if everyone in the next PLDI/POPL etc. would have LtU T-shirt :-)

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2004-07-26 07:50 | login or register to post comments

lambda

maybe it should say (lambda weblogs.com) = (lambda the.ultimate.org)

well maybe not, but it should probably have some sort of catchy cool thing so that people would say, hey i wanna wear that.

By pantagruel at Sat, 2004-07-24 18:38 | login or register to post comments

T Shirts

There a various amusing EOPL t-shirts out there. (\x. x x)(\x. x x) is one possible idea.

By Ehud Lamm at Sat, 2004-07-24 19:55 | login or register to post comments

Heh

That's not a million miles from my sig, which I was proud of for about five seconds after I thought it up, and have subsequently deleted from every single thing I've posted:

// shouting "lambda, lambda, lambda, lambda..."

(reference is to "Born Slippy", by Underworld, probably best known from the soundtrack to the film of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting)

By Dominic Fox at Sat, 2004-07-24 21:29 | login or register to post comments

Glad you enjoy the store!

I have been very pleased with the response from the authors, I was thinking only a handful would be okay with selling their books on a non-profit basis, but so far, no author I asked has said no. There are quite a few more books in the queue.

For all the ones I have up there now, I was able to get the original LaTeX source from the author in order to format them for the bookstore and edit the odd image or diagram that needed to fit on a different size page. For a few that I am working on, the only thing that exists are scans or old postscript copies, so it will be something of a challenge to get them to look profesional but I am making progress :)

By johnmeacham at Mon, 2004-07-26 20:22 | login or register to post comments

Great idea

It's a great idea, and I hope the books will sell. prices around in $18 range may be a bit oo high for some, however.

One suggestion: How about putting up paper collections? I am sure many here can offer great suggestions, and help compile anthologies on specific subjects. One problem with this idea is that copyrights of papers are usually transfered and don't remain with the author.

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2004-07-26 20:48 | login or register to post comments

Yeah, paper collections was t

Yeah, paper collections was the original idea before I found out it was actually easier to get the copyrights and legal issues worked out for books.

Something I'd really like is to collect some of the relevant and particularly influential papers cited in the books included as appendixes, thus creating better books than the originals. A good example would be the paper describing the points-to algorithm included with urban's thesis on GRIN.

If anyone wants to start getting together a paper collection, I would happily add it to the store. I'd recommend creating a page on the haskell Wiki and linking to it from the HaskellBookstore page and creating a list of papers and any notes on progress at obtaining permission to publish them.

$18 is basically the raw cost of printing plus $1 for the store maitenence fee. so far, I am losing some money, but that is okay, I imagine once I get more books up that will change and I can reduce the markup accordingly. but, like I said, it is only about a buck to begin with, and some of these books are going for a lot more than that on used stores and when new :)

By johnmeacham at Mon, 2004-07-26 21:00 | login or register to post comments

Price

I know. I didn't mean to imply you are to blame, cafepress are known to have a high minimum price. In fact, I think you should keep the price down, and offer another way to contribute (e.g., Paypal) so people can help out. If that doesn't sound like a good idea, I think you should raise your margin, you deserve it.

By Ehud Lamm at Mon, 2004-07-26 21:06 | login or register to post comments