Hello together,I am thinking about writing an introductory book on QuantLib.I am going to assume only the basic knowledge of financial math and C++ (or even C, without OOP).I am not a core developer of QuantLib but I have a long experience with it, have a look e.g. at this: http://www.wilmott.com/messageview.cfm? ... id=84419or this http://www.yetanotherquant.com/QuantLib ... HPS/Though I do not expect to earn much with this book, I am not going to do it "just for glory".So I would like to study the market first

I will buy it, you can write your own book and sell on lulu (what Mark.J did for his new book). I can't tell you what I want to pay, because that depends on the size of the book and the contents. If you bother to explain in details about the code, design pattern and mathematics, also enough contents (don't just give me the stuffs in the examples folder), I can pay more than a hundred. In general, price for a good and excellent quant book isn't an issue.

Will you be in Düsseldorf next Thursday and Friday?

Unfortunately no I would like but have to deputize for our teamleader who is on vacation.

I would never buy it but I'd recon the maximizing price vs units sold level is most likely at the $20-25 level. But yes, go with Lulu or similar which allows you to sell on Amazon but maximize your payout.

You might also consider a Kickstarter project which will ensure that you only have to commit to the project if enough people are interested. But be aware that selling a product via Kickstarter requires a solid reputation online (so friends and colleagues get things going) and pretty compelling offering (so strangers buy, too).

Another model is to make individual chapters available for $0.99 each so that if the buyer only wants help on some subtopic of QL, they can get it for less.

QuoteOriginally posted by: HansiI would never buy it but I'd recon the maximizing price vs units sold level is most likely at the $20-25 level. But yes, go with Lulu or similar which allows you to sell on Amazon but maximize your payout.Compare learning and applying undocumented code? 2 days work at 500 per hour.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Traden4AlphaAnother model is to make individual chapters available for $0.99 each so that if the buyer only wants help on some subtopic of QL, they can get it for less.Penny-wise, pound foolish. @finanzmaster,IMO it is better to state what you offer in a book and _then_ ask what a good price is. Everyone is going to say 20 bucks.. under your scenario.marketing?? here is your answer QuoteQuantLib has passed the 1.0 milestone but unfortunately the docs are still at 0.1 After having spent an entire afternoon being frustrating and trying to figure out how to extend the monte-carlo engine (I am currently trying to parallelize the engine for multi-core processors), I decided to write this post.I know that Luigi has done some work in documenting the library (http://sites.google.com/site/luigiballabio/qlbook) but clearly there is still a lot to be done.Off course this has to be a community effort and we can't just expect Luigi to write the entire docs...so let us bootstrap this effort...I am ready to start documenting the monte-carlo engine because it s my principal point of current interest An entire afternoon is ~ 1000 bucks manpower, etc.Would you pay a builder to learn bricklaying?? But you accept this in programmers (and _you_ have to pay their costs).

Just a quick note: my docs have grown somewhat since 2010, and the URL is no longer the one quoted in the previous post but http://implementingquantlib.blogspot.co ... -book.html.

Many thanks to everybody, who answered!>Cuchulainn: IMO it is better to state what you offer in a book and _then_ ask what a good price isWell, in a sense there is a vicious circle: what I am going to write depends on what people are going to pay But in a very first approximation the working plan is as follows:0) How to build Boost + QuantLib (I have already wrote it here: http://www.wilmott.com/messageview.cfm? ... adid=84419) 1) (optional) brief review of OOP fundamentals2) Boost-based components of QuantLib, in particular smart pointers. How to visualize them in VS-debugger.Design patterns (Dimitri Reiswich has already done an excellent job, but still...). UnitTests. Creating and reading Doxygen-Doku.3) Interest rate modeling from very beginning and very concretely (as Quant I am mostly experienced with fixed income):Date arithmetic (daycounters, business day conventions, etc).Bonds. Fitting yield curves: NSS, Cubic Spilnes, etc.3a) Interest rate models (equilibrium vs. no arbitrage, short rate vs. Libor, calibrated models, affine models, term structure consistent models, etc)4) Relation of financial instruments, pricing engines and models in QuantLib5) Pricing [simple] instruments6) [Discrete] Hedging revisited (specially for graduates: why it is important to hedge, not just to calculate the price as risk-neutral expectation of the discounted payoff).7) (optional) some modern/advanced topics: CVA/DVA adjustment, multicurve framework, etc. (optional) integrating QuantLib and CUDA/GPU for ad-hoc tasks.

QuoteOriginally posted by: finanzmasterMany thanks to everybody, who answered!>Cuchulainn: IMO it is better to state what you offer in a book and _then_ ask what a good price isWell, in a sense there is a vicious circle: what I am going to write depends on what people are going to pay Decades of consumer behavior research shows that what people say they will buy and how much they claim they will pay are not reliable indicators of true behavior. Nobody is going to reveal their true maximum price. Ultimately, writing a book is a leap of faith unless you use Kickstarter to lock people in. But getting people to commit to a product sight unseen requires a very strong reputation or offering.The other approach is to serialize the book -- write a chapter, sell it for "$0.99", see whether the trajectory of sales hints at sufficient latent demand for chapter i++, GOTO 1. Later you can bundle all the chapters in a book.You might start various threads on QL, here, and various another sites that have QL users to build both interest in the book and get feedback on what topics people really want (or would have wanted when they started using QL).

QuoteDecades of consumer behavior research shows that what people say they will buy and how much they claim they will pay are not reliable indicators of true behavior. Nobody is going to reveal their true maximum price. You mean, Hansi would pay $200?

QuoteOriginally posted by: CuchulainnQuoteDecades of consumer behavior research shows that what people say they will buy and how much they claim they will pay are not reliable indicators of true behavior. Nobody is going to reveal their true maximum price. You mean, Hansi would pay $200?Indeed! A clever little app would monitor each person's flailings with QL, assess whether they have en expense account, check their wages and purchase histories, and then offer the book at a suitable dynamic price when their frustration reaches a crescendo.