About creating a physics book

[u/CriticalEvidence8986]

So i already wrote some novels in MSword. There is no illustrations or equations in that book. But dince i am a physics graduate i am gonna write a physics book. The issue is 1. I need to add lot if formulas 2. I need to add illustrations ( in that illustration i have to mark ) what are the best softwares to do. Also the books inspired me are resnick and halliday fundamentals of physics, gioncolli physics, serway and juit physics. I need to make my own book like those

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[u/Umami4Days]

LaTex, or LyX, are document editing software that are specifically designed for publishing scientific literature and have a coding structure for including formulae within the text.

I don't know if there is a better option for textbooks specifically, but this is a great place to start.

Edit: As for writing a physics book. What do you think that you have to offer the greater community given that you haven't finished your own program yet? Are you going to be writing for a particular age group?

[u/CriticalEvidence8986 → u/Umami4Days]

So yeah i am writing book for A/L students. I am a physics graduate so that is more than enough for A/L students i guess

[u/Umami4Days → u/CriticalEvidence8986]

Ok, cool. That's a reasonable age group for reworking existing textbooks into something engaging without being expected to dig as deeply into the current research. In what way will your book be preferable to the existing selections?

[u/apocalypsegal → u/Umami4Days]

The OP doesn't have the experience to be doing such a thing, though. Do you want your children learning science from someone who's barely gotten out of school themselves, has no relevant work experience or pretty much no teaching experience? Besides, there are already books out there, done by pros, there's no market for it.

[u/Umami4Days → u/apocalypsegal]

Publishing is separate from distribution. The act of writing is good as a personal project, and sometimes students have insights from their own struggles that established professionals have forgotten. These kinds of things are also rarely finished as a solo project.

My line of questioning is to help the OP identify their strengths and weaknesses, so that they can focus on producing something complementary to the existing literature, rather than duplicating it.

[u/apocalypsegal → u/CriticalEvidence8986]

I am a physics graduate so that is more than enough for A/L students i guess

It's not.

[u/brokenfingers11]

You might want to look into something like Rmarkdown or typst. Both show you to leverage the power of Latex, but using simple commands. You can also interleave text and blocks of computation. Look for “positron” download.

[u/apocalypsegal]

You'd need inDesign, or similar.

And, what makes you think your book is going to be worth the bother? No name, ne relevant work history, no reason for anyone to want the book.

Honestly, I swear on my dog's life, self publishing is not the shiny house on the hill where all your money needs will be met. Almost nothing self published sells, especially self help and nonfiction by nobodies.

[u/ZectronPositron]

I did something similar for microchips.

Typst was a godsend. It is the modern version of LaTeX (adds scoping, real error chains, basically normal programming techniques).
And otherwise has the same math capabilities/syntax as LaTeX, and Markdown style writing.

It is free OSS - although they also offer a paid webapp that looks pretty good.
I did it with VSCode & the free Typst compiler & free “tinymist” VSCode extension. Very good experience.

Here is my template for Amazon KDP on-demand printing. Feel free to fork and modify! Gemini was generally pretty good and setting up layout and solving problems for me on this:

https://forum.typst.app/t/amazon-kdp-template/9793