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Topic Title: Justin London's New Book
Created On Wed May 31, 06 01:56 AM

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DominicConnor
Senior Member

Posts: 11300
Joined: Jul 2002

Wed May 31, 06 01:56 AM

He's baaaack.....
Just when you thought it was safe to buy a book from Amazon, A new dimension in terror.
In his head, no one can hear you scream.

Edited: Wed May 31, 06 at 01:57 AM by DominicConnor

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lballabio
Senior Member

Posts: 953
Joined: Jan 2004

Wed May 31, 06 07:38 AM

Stay tuned for Justin London's new book "Modeling Derivatives Applications in Java, Common Lisp, and Ruby on Rails"

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mutley
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Posts: 656
Joined: Feb 2005

Wed May 31, 06 08:01 AM

$200 ??? Luigi - you'd better start charging that dood for your QuantLib code!

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WilmottBookshop
Bookshop

Posts: 1083
Joined: Aug 2002

Wed May 31, 06 09:20 AM

Modeling Derivatives Applications in Matlab, C++, and Excel pre-order this title from the Wilmott Bookshop.

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madmax
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Posts: 1091
Joined: Oct 2003

Wed May 31, 06 10:00 AM

Oh! Shit! Do you realize how much they are charging for this one 199 USD or �90 !
May be I should start writing some books as well.

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DominicConnor
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Posts: 11300
Joined: Jul 2002

Wed May 31, 06 11:06 AM

It is an interesting price point, certainly a book can be "worth" that much, but what does it tell you about the motivations of the person writing it ?

Most finance book authors do not have a reasonable expectation of making useful money from the cover price. Only a relatively small % of what you pay ends up in their pocket.
It takes a lot of time and effort, and of course if you know enough finance to write a good book, then it's extremely unlikely to pay back more than the same effort spent on your real job.
There is also the possibility that you may make a blunder (or 37 blunders) and embarass yourself.

But here is a certain satisfaction in seeing your work in print even in this electronic age, and it's good to know your stuff is used by others and that your work is admired by your peers.

The strongest monetary motivation is that a good book is the perfect CV upgrade. People I know with successful books have often managed to get better jobs on the back of their enhanced reputation,
and that is very worthwhile for anyone.
Thus the publisher and author typically have very different utility functions.

The publisher wants to maximise number of sales * margin, and as we see in so many finance books, this leads to high cover prices.
The author typically wants to maximise number of sales, and unless a vast number are sold simply does not care much about the profit he shares with the publisher.
That is of course why our Guide is swapped for CVs, we want a high number of "sales". One day we'll sell it for (I guess 30-35), so getting two bites at that apple.

So why charge so much for JL's book ?
It may not be his decision, it's hard to see Wiley's US operation as a perfect decision maker, so it may be what they think maximises their profit.
Altenernatively he may feel that his reputation isn't going to change much, and that his best return for the huge effort he's put in is the few bucks he'll get per copy.

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spursfan
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Posts: 805
Joined: Oct 2001

Wed May 31, 06 12:25 PM

if it's anything like the first book it's probable that most of the huge effort has been put in by others rather than justin - and he's gone from Wiley US to FT for his publisher

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Braveheart
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Posts: 21
Joined: Feb 2005

Wed May 31, 06 07:29 PM

i am thinking of buying the first book for an insight to how libor market model is coded. Anyone any opinion on this part of the book and the code. Does he go into 2 factor models on LMM or is it just one factor? Perhaps there is something else I should be looking at?

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Cuchulainn
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Posts: 29871
Joined: Jul 2004

Wed May 31, 06 10:41 PM

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The strongest monetary motivation is that a good book is the perfect CV upgrade. People I know with successful books have often managed to get better jobs on the back of their enhanced reputation,and that is very worthwhile for anyone.

Dominic,
Nice.
After having written a book you become respectable. But at a cost. Solving equations and mucking around in C++ is easier.

Here's the test if one wants to become a writer: let's say you have spent the last month writing an application. Where's the design blueprint? Or is the code self-documenting (ha-ha!)
Do you like doing the doc work? If not, don't write a book because it will be rubbish.

And Max, to bring you back to earth safely here'e the real payoff

ROI = (Total_Royalties - Tax) / (total number of hours to write book)

A sobering thought.

-------------------------
www.datasimfinancial.com

Edited: Thu Jun 01, 06 at 04:58 AM by Cuchulainn

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madmax
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Posts: 1091
Joined: Oct 2003

Thu Jun 01, 06 09:38 AM

Cuch,
My comment was sarcastic. I have no intention, desire or willingness to write a book in the near future indenpendent of whatever rewards there might be in doing so.

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ckarakus
Senior Member

Posts: 470
Joined: Oct 2004

Thu Jun 01, 06 01:50 PM

Quote
Originally posted by: WilmottBookshop
Modeling Derivatives Applications in Matlab, C++, and Excel pre-order this title from the Wilmott Bookshop.

I think wilmott.com destroys its reputation by posting advirtesement for that shit

-------------------------
Implementation matters!

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DominicConnor
Senior Member

Posts: 11300
Joined: Jul 2002

Thu Jun 01, 06 02:00 PM

I think wilmott.com destroys its reputation by posting advirtesement for that shit

To be fair we don't know it's shit. No one has seen it yet. All we know really is about "friends" of Justin London who send emails claiming our wives are whores and
that apparently we know nothing of the subject. One of the "friends" had even taken the trouble to find out details of which area of law Mrs DCFC worked in, and make comments about her.

The bookshop are advertisers, and frankly it is their job to pop up on threads discussing a given book and point out that they'll sell it to you cheap. They pay for this
privilege which makes this site viable.

I look forward to reviewing Mr. London's book. One of the entertainments in my life is that I'm an occasional contributor to The Register, and thus can get his publisher to send me a copy if it actually gets published.

Of course one of the voices in Mr. London's head may be reading this, and get the voice that talks to publishers to forbid FT/Pearson from sending me a copy.
That will have all sorts of fun results.

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mutley
Senior Member

Posts: 656
Joined: Feb 2005

Thu Jun 01, 06 05:24 PM

Go DCFC!! El Reg is often an amusing break from broken code and angry traders

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ckarakus
Senior Member

Posts: 470
Joined: Oct 2004

Thu Jun 01, 06 07:04 PM

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To be fair we don't know it's shit. No one has seen it yet.

i bet for 100 quit with anyone that it will be shit!
the reason is simple: instead of fixing his previous shit he decided to write a new 700 pages book
his motivation is clear : steal as much as he can using attractive names for the crap he packages

-------------------------
Implementation matters!

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Cuchulainn
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Posts: 29871
Joined: Jul 2004

Thu Jun 01, 06 07:34 PM

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Originally posted by: madmax
Cuch,
My comment was sarcastic. I have no intention, desire or willingness to write a book in the near future indenpendent of whatever rewards there might be in doing so.

Max,
I am so glad

BTW if you did write a book, just out of curiosity, how many pages would in be?

-------------------------
www.datasimfinancial.com

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mutley
Senior Member

Posts: 656
Joined: Feb 2005

Thu Jun 01, 06 10:23 PM

Mine would be 3 including the front and back cover

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DominicConnor
Senior Member

Posts: 11300
Joined: Jul 2002

Fri Jun 02, 06 01:03 AM

the reason is simple: instead of fixing his previous shit he decided to write a new 700 pages book his motivation is clear : steal as much as he can using attractive names for the crap he packages
I understand his last book sold well, and I have to confess that browsing though it without reading too closely, I was one of those suckers.

Certailny C++, Matlab and Excel are good buzzwords, but I personally would be daunted by trying to write a book that did all 3 of those + finance + maths well.

700 pages is a lot, and rather a round number, wonder how many it will be if it ever escapes into the wild ?
We should have bets on it.

The buzzword quotient, and the fact that to newbies "the "Financial Times" is a plausble brand for this work, I'd bet it has a stint as the best selling finance book.

I'd also bet money it doesn't come out this year. Book are a bit like s/w in that if you're not careful the effort grows at least as the square of the size.

Here's a good and rather scary bet, who is going to do the endorsements on the cover ?
Fischer Black ? Nick Leeson ? Billionaire Buce Wayne ?

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mutley
Senior Member

Posts: 656
Joined: Feb 2005

Fri Jun 02, 06 08:22 AM

I think David Koresh is more likely.

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madmax
Senior Member

Posts: 1091
Joined: Oct 2003

Fri Jun 02, 06 09:32 AM

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Originally posted by: Cuchulainn
Quote
Originally posted by: madmax
Cuch,
My comment was sarcastic. I have no intention, desire or willingness to write a book in the near future indenpendent of whatever rewards there might be in doing so.

Max,
I am so glad BTW if you did write a book, just out of curiosity, how many pages would in be?

It all depends on what the book is about. It would be as long as it should be to get the essential info across but no longer, trying to keep it as focused as possible. May be putting anything that you wanted at first to put in but then decided that it is not really necessary in an accompanying website.
You cannot have a target number of pages irrespective of the content. Stroustrup's book (the Big one) is great and I would not have like it better with less pages, while I also like GOF design patterns but think this one could have been better with some 100 pages less but still covering all the material.

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lballabio
Senior Member

Posts: 953
Joined: Jan 2004

Fri Jun 02, 06 09:47 PM

Quote
Originally posted by: mutley
Mine would be 3 including the front and back cover

Hopefully, mine would be light enough to be taken to the bathroom


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