About a year ago I decided that I would try to write an electronics related book. I had written, in the past, simple articles, a couple small books related to dental medical equipment, blog posts on this forum, and a manual for a desoledring station but never anything that would really qualify as a book. Unlike most of my friends on this forum I am not an engineer. I am a self taught technician so my first thought was, what could I possibly write about the would be of any interest to my engineer friends and the electronics community in general?
One of the areas of electronics where I have a lot of fun is in taking an existing circuit board and working backwards to produce a schematic. When I have blogged about reverse engineering a simple circuit board a couple times on the forum there was always some interest. I began the book with the intention of making it about Reverse Engineering a Simple Circuit. As I wrote, I got the idea that my 60 plus years of experience playing with electronics, all the while building and perfecting an electronics experimenters shop, might also contain some ideas and tips that would be of interest. The original plan was to intersperse the Tech Tips randomly in the text on Reverse Engineering. The Tech Tips, however, began to grow and grow and soon overwhelmed the main topic of reverse engineering.
My concept for the book then changed and it became a collection of electronics articles and technical tips related to setting up an experimenter's shop and doing experimenter's electronics. The original topic of Reverse Engineering a circuit became just one of the 50 plus articles contained in the book. There are several articles that mirror some of the blog posts that I have done under the title "Tech Tips" on this forum. There is no rational arrangement to the articles though there is a slight tendency for the complexity to increase as one goes deeper into the book. I did this to keep the interest up and make the book more eclectic and entertaining.
Since I have never written a book before I proceeded with my writing without any attention to what I would or could do with the book when it was completed. It seems that in a sense I have painted myself into a corner. The book is now done and it contains 236 pages with color photos on at least half of the pages. It is written by an unknown author of untested ability. The color photos which I feel are very important to the book and the explanations of the material make the book expensive to print. If I self publish, using one of the many resources for publishing books today, the net cost of the book becomes too high. Therefore I am going to experiment with a new marketing idea and release the book to anyone interested in checking it out. (I actually got the idea from a farmer who had his unattended vegetable stand out by the road with a tin can for customers to pay him.) This will be similar to shopping in a book store as you can pickup the book and look at it as much as you want. If you like it and want to keep it you can buy it and if you do not want to keep it simply delete the pdf file. There will be no tracking or follow up to anyone that the book is sent to. If the tin can is empty I will just know that the vegetables weren't tasty.
I will begin here on element 14 as this forum and the friends that I have made here have been an inspiration to me. Anyone who wants to take a look at the book has only to request one by emailing me at johnwiltrout@att.net .
I will then email you a pdf file (20MB) and you can check it out. If your email will not accommodate a file that is this large we will have to try a different method.
Thanks John
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