Sales
drorzel | January 28, 2010I've toyed around in the past with ways to use the Amazon sales rank tracker to estimate the sales numbers for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. It's geeky fun, but not especially quantitative.
Yesterday, though, I found a reason to re-visit the topic: calibration data!
OK, "calibration data" is probably too strong a description. "Calibration anecdote" is more accurate.
Yesterday when I went into work a little after 10, a comment somebody made sent me to the actual Amazon page for the book, where I saw a little note next to the price information saying "Only 5 left (more are coming)-- order…
drorzel | January 23, 2010Having seen other authors led into destruction by responding to customer reviews on Amazon, I tend to approach the customer reviews of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog with some trepidation.
It turns out, though, that they're really good. And I don't mean that in a Harriet Kalunser kind of way-- the positive reviews are thoughtful and positive, and the negative comments that have been made are for the most part legitimate criticisms of the book. And then there's this one:
My 11 year old son is nuts about physics, so I got this book to see how it would go over with him. It did, perfectly. The…
drorzel | January 22, 2010We're once again in the "things are in the pipeline, but nothing has been posted recently" mode, which is a good excuse for some Amazon neepery.
Since the AP review came out, and was printed in 20-odd papers, the sales rank has climbed back into the four digits, and has spent the last few days hovering around 2,000. This is pretty respectable, and Amazon proudly touts it as being "#1 in Books > Science > Physics > Quantum Theory," which sounds nice.
Of course, what does that really mean?
If you click through to the "Quantum Theory" subcategory, you'll see that it's a weird…
drorzel | January 20, 2010The college bookstore has set up a display table right at the front of the store with a bunch of copies of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which is kind of a kick. Some of my students asked me about it in lab yesterday.
The big news, though, is that the Associated Press review ran Monday. I've known they were working on one for a while, now, but didn't see it before it went live. It's not a great review-- it ends "For people who are smarter than the average mixed-breed dog, this might be a good way to learn about the nature of microscopic particles. But I'm waiting for Orzel to write…
drorzel | January 17, 2010The Barnes and Noble store finder finally indicated the presence of copies in the local stores yesterday, so we made a trip down to the Colonie Center, where they had a half-dozen face out in the Physics section, and probably 15-20 on the new releases table. Woo-hoo!
(Now I can shift to fretting that they've got too many in the local stores, and will end up returning most of them...)
Anyway, if you're in the Albany area, and want a copy, they have them in Barnes and Noble now.
Miscellaneous other items:
A nice plug from Derek Lowe
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog catches the eye of another…
drorzel | January 17, 2010A couple of nifty bits of news from the British Commonwealth:
The BBC's Magazine Monitor blog noted my Seed article.
Better yet, How to Teach Physics to Your Dog makes Smriti Daniel's list of "the best books to emerge in 2009" in the Sunday Times of Sri Lanka. The other books on the list: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple, Drood by Dan Simmons, and Unseen Academicals by some guy named Pratchett. That's pretty awesome company to be in...
So…
drorzel | January 14, 2010Even when I'm on the road, I continue to be obsessed...
A nice review at Lean Left that really gets Emmy's role in the book:The dog asks clear questions and Orzel uses those interjections well. They very often serve as a way to clarify, or to bring up questions that the readers probably has, or to deal with obvious tangents. It is a very effective tactic and it serves to lighten the prose at strategic times in the discussion. The dog' voice is skeptical, wise, incredulous and smug (and bloodthirsty. Much of the time, the dog is attempting to use physics to hunt down and, one presumes,…
drorzel | January 13, 2010Miscellaneous book-related items for you to read while I spend most of the day in transit to Austin:
While I have yet to see a copy in a Barnes and Noble store locally, it's selling well enough in the national chain for them to have ordered more copies. Yay!
Relatedly, the publisher has just ordered a second printing, woo-hoo! I'm not sure what the total number of copies on paper is, but if they've asked for more, that's definitely a good sign.
I have a couple of radio interviews scheduled for next week, which ought to be an adventure. I'm taping an interview with Jim Scott of WLW in…
drorzel | January 8, 2010Two new links for today's Obsessive Update:
The first is a nice article from Union's press office, with the headline "You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but what about physics?". I spent half an hour or so talking with one of the staff writers (who has a science background, which is a nice bonus) on Wednesday, so it's a fast turnaround, too.
The second is a passing mention in a possibly skeevy Russian site's article about the golden retriever physics video that went around a couple of months ago. Amazing what the vanity search turns up...
The sales rank, for those who care, continues to…
drorzel | January 7, 2010Not much news on the book front this morning-- various promotional things are in progress, including an on-campus thing tomorrow afternoon, but there's nothing new to link to.
We do, however, have the first non-mammal added to the DogPhysics Pet Gallery: a lizard, sent in by Marcella McIntyre. It's not actually a pet, per se, but it's shown reading up on the Uncertainty Principle, so at least it has a healthy curiosity.
If you've got a copy of the book, and you have pets, send a picture of your pet(s) with the book to queen_emmy@steelypips.org, and we'll add it to the Gallery. And if there's…
drorzel | January 6, 2010Not a whole lot new, but it's been a few days. Also, it's a challenge to remain ambulatory at the moment, thanks to this cursed cold, so I'm not really prepared to turn out Significant Blogging.
-- This morning's vanity search (why yes, I am searching for "How to Teach Physics to Your Dog" on a daily basis. Aren't you?) turned up this Current Geek podcast, which talks about the book. They haven't read it yet, but picked up the BoingBoing mention, and are enthusiastic about the idea. They pretty well nail the thinking behind the book.
-- The vanity search also turned up this discussion of my…
drorzel | January 4, 2010Today is the first day of classes, and to celebrate, I've come down with the Martian death virus that Kate and SteelyKid have had the last few weeks. Joy.
This calls for a How to Teach Physics to Your Dog update, to distract myself from the cotton balls and vacuum pump oil that have apparently been stuffed into my sinuses:
The primary news is that Peter Woit has posted a review, in which he says mostly good things:
While Brian Greene in his Elegant Universe Nova special introduced general relativity by trying to discuss it with a dog, concluding that "No matter how hard you try, you can't…
drorzel | January 1, 2010There isn't all that much news for a real obsessive update, so I'll lump in a few writing-related items of possible interest to people who read books other than mine.
A real obsessive update item: BradDeLong doubts my book can help his dog.
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog gets four out of five stars as part of a good books round-up in the Timmins Daily Press in Ontario. (Google News search is nifty).
A fortuitous discovery thanks to, of all things, an ad in GMail: QM for cat lovers, part of an old blog of imaginary conversations with Einstein. I doubt this will change anybody's mind about…
drorzel | December 30, 2009 I should probably start date-tagging these updates about miscellaneous How to Teach Physics to Your Dog news. I don't really mean this to become a second daily links dump, but it's kind of looking that way...
-- As a general matter, it's dangerous for authors to acknowledge the existence of Amazon customer reviews (acknowledgment leads to responding, responding leads to madness), but the half-dozen customer reviews already posted are really good. These three especially. There are also a couple that aren't much more coherent than comment spam, so go figure.
-- At the risk of setting up a…
drorzel | December 29, 2009 Today's miscellaneous information about How to Teach Physics to your Dog:
-- Following on yesterday's discussion about Barnes & Noble, which seems to have numerous in-store copies everywhere but New England, where I am, it's not some system-wide issue-- B&N stores have a healthy number of copies, and have sold a pretty reasonable number of them already. It's probably just a matter of shelving/ distribution associated with the holidays.
-- I couldn't really be the only blogger to think of connecting dogs and physics, and, indeed, I'm not. A bloodhound in Manhattan named Wimsey offers…