A new book has been recently been launched titled "FPV Flight Dynamics: Mastering Acro Mode on High-Performance Drones" which looks quite interesting. It's fairly pricey at $50 but as it's about flight dynamics rather than hardware so it's not something that is going to become quickly outdated like hardware related literature. Maybe it will appeal to some people on here.

Amazon (US): https://www.amazon.com/dp/173620940X

Author's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vespulafpv

EDIT: I should mention that I have no affiliation with the author and don't have a copy of the book. I just thought it was worth publicising on here for anyone who might be interested.

 

"unlock the third dimension" xD okeee, sounds a bit like for beginners but nice there is a book, i like to have a look into it :-)

The author is also planning on making an eBook version which I guess will be cheaper. People are saying it's a "must have" book to help you accelerate improvement of your skills even if you already fly acro.

Hey SnowLeopard, this is Christian Mollica, the author. Thanks for giving the book a little shoutout! And yeah, I was careful with the type of material to include and how to present it, because a book is a very static medium and FPV is a very fast-moving hobby. So I avoided diving too deep into the technical specifics of hardware and kept most of that content top-level.

The meat of the book is really devoted to learning how to fly FPV multirotors in Acro, and in that regard I was also careful to talk about those concepts in such a way that they'd have the most staying power over time.

As far as the price goes, I'm not thrilled with it either. Long story short, a book like this with such niche subject material being sold to a market that's as small as the current FPV community means it has to be self-published. I shopped it around to a few traditional publishing houses, but they're just not willing to take a chance on something that has zero mass-appeal. So I decided to go through Amazon's KDP service, where they print the book on-demand for each order. A 280-page, full-color interior textbook with an 8.5x11" trim size is not cheap to produce (about $21/copy to be exact). I don't mind being fully transparent and telling you that out of that $49.99 sticker price, only about $9 goes back to me as a royalty, the rest goes to Jeff Bezos lol.

Anyway, thanks again for your interest in it and posting about it. If you ever decide to pick up a copy and give it a read, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Reach me directly at [email protected].

(04-Jan-2021, 07:17 PM)hugnosed_bat Wrote: "unlock the third dimension" xD okeee, sounds a bit like for beginners but nice there is a book, i like to have a look into it :-)

HAHA! Yeahhh... maybe a little corny I'll admit, but marketing stuff, y'know?

I think beginner/intermediate fliers will definitely get the most value from the book, and I wrote it primarily with them in mind. But that being said, the subtitle is "MASTERING Acro Mode..." and that's not a claim that I take lightly. The book is loaded with really in-depth analysis on all the critical concepts that a pilot needs to internalize in order to master their quadcopter.

One of my other goals with this book was to write it in such a way that even if you're already an advanced pilot, you could pick it up and you'd be engaged and interested all the way through. You would intuitively understand all the things I'm talking about, but maybe have a deeper understanding of WHY you know these things.

And honestly, I'm personally craving deeper conversations with other pilots, and I wanted to define/document concepts that are currently not spoken about in any great detail within the community. If some of the content within FPVFD offers a launching pad from which pilots can open up new dialogues, then that's really all I want. Hell, even if the community comes to unanimously disagree with one of my points/opinions, then perhaps it helps to push our collective knowledge just a tiny step farther.

(05-Jan-2021, 02:46 AM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: The author is also planning on making an eBook version which I guess will be cheaper. People are saying it's a "must have" book to help you accelerate improvement of your skills even if you already fly acro.

That is correct, I'm working on converting the book into a digital format. This process is actually a lot more convoluted than I anticipated...  I assumed I could just take the print-ready PDF and PRESTO!... turn it into an ePub file, but that's just not the case as I'm now discovering.

The problem with making it digital is that it's a graphically intensive textbook that I formatted specifically for print. This means it has to remain in a "fixed-format" layout, and can't have reflowable text like you'd get on a Kindle reader for example. You'll only be able to read it on large monitors/tablets, and even then you'd have to probably zoom in and out while reading through the pages. It would be cheaper to sell than a physical paperback, but I sincerely worry about my reader's user experience, and I fear people would be unhappy with it.

So... long story short, work in progress!

you wrote that book? very nice

i wish it would be for free xD like oscars great source of knowledge, but i like also if someone can get money for good work. thanks for your work for fpv.

could you probably provide a small piece of it, so we can have an impression how its written?

(05-Jan-2021, 04:30 PM)hugnosed_bat Wrote: you wrote that book? very nice

i wish it would be for free xD like oscars great source of knowledge, but i like also if someone can get money for good work. thanks for your work for fpv.

could you probably provide a small piece of it, so we can have an impression how its written?

Yes sir, that's me! It took nearly 13 months working full-time to create it. There's probably about 2,500 hours worth of work that went into it.

All of the 3D graphics I created using Blender, and then formatted the entire book by hand in Adobe Illustrator, page by page by page...  It was a really tedious process.

If you're interested in having a peek, and I sincerely don't mean to be overtly salesy here, but honestly the best way is to check out the product page on Amazon. They have the "Look Inside" feature that you can click on and it lets you flip through about 15% of the book's interior. Or if you just want to check out my IG page (@vespulafpv), most of my posts feature artwork/infographics that are lifted directly from the pages.

Hmmmm seems like an interesting book. However, I would rather spend $50 on a set of motors for my quad. There are lots of great free online resources like Youtube which I have used to improve my skills. Also, you can join Discord with other drone racers, some of which are extremely fast indeed. I have learned a lot from these guys. As for the book, I hope it shall help other pilots figure out the tricks, because I sure wish I had something like this in my library :-)

(05-Jan-2021, 04:07 PM)VespulaFPV Wrote: Hey SnowLeopard, this is Christian Mollica, the author. Thanks for giving the book a little shoutout!

No problem. I saw it on another social media outlet and it's quite rare in this hobby to have printed instructions with equipment let alone printed literature that explains all the concepts of actually flying a quad, so I thought it was worth publicising on here to try and gain some more interest for it  

Although $50 seems pricey, for the amount of work that went into the book I think it's probably a reasonable amount to pay if you want to learn something, especially when people in this hobby are spending thousands of dollars on equipment. It's just the cost of an FC or ESC board so if people are interested enough then it should just be factored in as part of the cost of all their "gear" IMO. It's no different to YouTube content creators getting money from ads and Patreon subscribers. Not many of those creators actually make and publish videos for nothing. I'm disappointed that you only make $9 out of each book though. That really is daylight robbery by Amazon.

Is anyone else selling the book other than Amazon in the US, or are you planning to sell it through other outlets? For instance I don't see it listed on the Amazon UK site or anywhere else. The only option seems to be to buy from Amazon US which incurs quite high shipping charges to other parts of the world. This is where a digitally downloadable eBook version might have an advantage, but there is nothing like a proper physical book with full size colour images in.

(05-Jan-2021, 06:02 PM)raspberrypi33 Wrote: Hmmmm seems like an interesting book. However, I would rather spend $50 on a set of motors for my quad. There are lots of great free online resources like Youtube which I have used to improve my skills. Also, you can join Discord with other drone racers, some of which are extremely fast indeed. I have learned a lot from these guys. As for the book, I hope it shall help other pilots figure out the tricks, because I sure wish I had something like this in my library :-)

That's completely fair, and it's a sentiment that I agree with actually. So much so that I wrote it right into the book's preface by saying:

"There’s plenty of instructional content freely available from talented pilots who want you to succeed just as much as I do, and I’ll be the first person to tell you that you don’t need to read this book. I learned Acro by ravenously consuming all the information that I could find online, and if you have the tenacity to dive down every rabbit hole, then you, too, can stitch together a fundamental understanding of FPV on your own."

I think the value of a book lies in the organization and the careful curation of the information held within it.

(05-Jan-2021, 06:13 PM)SnowLeopardFPV Wrote: No problem. I saw it on another social media outlet and it's quite rare in this hobby to have printed instructions with equipment let alone printed literature that explains all the concepts of actually flying a quad, so I thought it was worth publicising on here to try and gain some more interest for it  

Although $50 seems pricey, for the amount of work that went into the book I think it's probably a reasonable amount to pay if you want to learn something, especially when people in this hobby are spending thousands of dollars on equipment. It's just the cost of an FC or ESC board so if people are interested enough then it should just be factored in as part of the cost of all their "gear" IMO. It's no different to YouTube content creators getting money from ads and Patreon subscribers. Not many of those creators actually make and publish videos for nothing. I'm disappointed that you only make $9 out of each book though. That really is daylight robbery by Amazon.

Is anyone else selling the book other than Amazon in the US, or are you planning to sell it through other outlets? For instance I don't see it listed on the Amazon UK site or anywhere else. The only option seems to be to buy from Amazon US which incurs quite high shipping charges to other parts of the world. This is where a digitally downloadable eBook version might have an advantage, but there is nothing like a proper physical book with full size colour images in.

Yeah, trust me, I'm not getting rich from publishing this book lol. Frankly, if it's commercially successful enough for me to recoup my actual dollar investment and my opportunity cost then I'd be thrilled. The absolute minimum price that Amazon will even allow me to list the book is around $40, which is their break-even point and would leave me with a $0 royalty per sale.

And as far as distribution goes, it should be available on Amazon.co.uk. It's listed with their KDP global network. From what I understand the Print-on-Demand service is different for each region, so should be handled logistically fairly locally. There aren't pallets of the book sitting in warehouses waiting to be sold, they just get printed one at a time as sales come in. It's how many, many books on Amazon are sold actually.

Vespula, I applaud you in your efforts. As an entrepreneur myself, I have a sense of the willpower it takes to bootstrap an operation. And thank you for the bit of insight into the process. This whole thing was way more DIY than I suspected. I always thought that an army of editors was there to make everything pretty for you. I guess not. Kudos to you!

I am curious though. Raspberry touched on this above and I don't doubt you have given this much thought. The FPV community (I am not counting DJI camera guys ... cos that's not really FPV lol zing!!) is notoriously independent DIY'ers much borne out of necessity since it is still a relatively new industry. Our flight controllers were once ghetto hacked Nintendo Wii controllers for crying out loud lol. With that said, how do you reconcile this mentality with a laid out well organized book that generally runs counter to this character type?

(05-Jan-2021, 06:53 PM)the.ronin Wrote: Vespula, I applaud you in your efforts.  As an entrepreneur myself, I have a sense of the willpower it takes to bootstrap an operation.  And thank you for the bit of insight into the process.  This whole thing was way more DIY than I suspected.  I always thought that an army of editors was there to make everything pretty for you.  I guess not.  Kudos to you!

I am curious though.  Raspberry touched on this above and I don't doubt you have given this much thought.  The FPV community (I am not counting DJI camera guys ... cos that's not really FPV lol zing!!) is notoriously independent DIY'ers much borne out of necessity since it is still a relatively new industry.  Our flight controllers were once ghetto hacked Nintendo Wii controllers for crying out loud lol.  With that said, how do you reconcile this mentality with a laid out well organized book that generally runs counter to this character type?

I 100% agree with you. However, there also are a lot of other "non-technical" or "DIYer" FPV pilots who are interested in the hobby. I guess you could call them consumers or whatnot. People who do not necessarily want to pursue the hobby into the deepest depths, and who just want to buy a RTF and fly. In a sense, this book would kind of like be the "hard-copy" version of the Velocidrone Flight Training videos or VIK FPV's freestyle guides, to name just a few.
But I still do not doubt our hobby's DIY background. That's what got me interested into electrical engineering in the first place, building quads and airplanes and such.
At the end of the day, I think people would support this book because they may believe that it makes the hobby more accessible to more people. This in turn, could potentially get more people into the hobby, growing the market and economy. Kinda like a win-win-win-win situation. Author gets $$$, more people get IntoFPV (LOL), companies make more $$$, which in turn means that hardcore FPV pilots get more parts, bigger companies with better stock supplies, etc...
But I might be getting ahead of myself in thinking. 

(05-Jan-2021, 06:53 PM)the.ronin Wrote: Vespula, I applaud you in your efforts.  As an entrepreneur myself, I have a sense of the willpower it takes to bootstrap an operation.  And thank you for the bit of insight into the process.  This whole thing was way more DIY than I suspected.  I always thought that an army of editors was there to make everything pretty for you.  I guess not.  Kudos to you!

I am curious though.  Raspberry touched on this above and I don't doubt you have given this much thought.  The FPV community (I am not counting DJI camera guys ... cos that's not really FPV lol zing!!) is notoriously independent DIY'ers much borne out of necessity since it is still a relatively new industry.  Our flight controllers were once ghetto hacked Nintendo Wii controllers for crying out loud lol.  With that said, how do you reconcile this mentality with a laid out well organized book that generally runs counter to this character type?

Hey Ronin, thanks for the kind words man, appreciate that coming from a fellow entrepreneur! And yeah, I wore many hats on this project lol. It was written, edited, illustrated, formatted for print, copyrighted with the Library of Congress, registered with the ISBN, and published solely by myself. I hired a graphics designer to help with the cover and then to develop some of the book's interior templates (a "style guide," so to speak) and compile it into a print-ready PDF. But everything else was done painstakingly by hand.

And as for your question, I think that in the FPV hobby we have a bit of a survivor bias. The only ones that really get to an advanced level are the self-starter masochist types like us who have the patience and are willing to invest the kind of time and money that's needed to master all the tangential disciplines associated with flying quads. For beginners just getting into the hobby, if they read through something like FPVFD I think it can rapidly set them down the right path. The idea is to get them into the sim, explain to them how best to utilize that powerful tool, and get them to a skill level where they really want to keep going. I wrote the book as if it were a video game manual in a lot of ways. If everything about this hobby is painful then they're just going to quit, and the churn rate for FPV is certainly unhealthy long-term. But if they get a whiff of success early on, and really have a chance to experience the joys of FPV flight firsthand, then I think they'll be so much more willing to stick with it.

Also, just to play Devil's advocate for a second, as a DIY guy myself I'm a bit of a min/maxer. So if there's something out there that can streamline a learning process for me, and increase the efficiency of the time that I'm putting in, then hell yeah, I want it! I'll gladly be the beneficiary of someone else's long, painful process of trial and error if they can just wrap it all up and give me the cliff notes. Does my book represent just such a resource for people in FPV? I have no idea, and it's really not my place to say. I just genuinely hope that it provides value to the people who read it. And I hope that I've captured the essence of the hobby and presented it faithfully. As someone who is deeply passionate about flying FPV and has great respect for everyone else who loves it as much as I do, I offer this book to the community with the utmost humility.