As noted in a previous post, Breakfast with Einstein was featured in a book review in the New York Times. This was, obviously, a pretty exciting development for me; it’s also a chance to poke at numbers a bit and get a sense of the power of different kinds of media.

The screen shot above is from Amazon’s “Author Central” service, and shows the Amazon sales rank for Breakfast with Einstein over the last month. This is an imperfect measure of sales, but one that’s immediately available (they also provide real-ish sales numbers from BookScan, but those have a delay of at least a week).

Immediately after release, the book shot up to a pretty respectable Sales Rank in the low five digits (I think the peak was around 11,000, but it was between 10,000 and 20,000 for most of December). Since then, it dropped off, as naturally happens, and was bouncing around between 50,000 and 100,000 for the last few weeks.

The NYT review went live online on Tuesday, probably because it’s a review of three science books, and that synched up with the “Science Times” section on Tuesday. As you can see in the graph, this immediately sent the Sales Rank back up to near its release-week peak, in the 10,000-15,000 range. I thought that was pretty nice.

That was more or less what I was expecting. I was not, however, expecting the next jump, which started on Saturday, when I checked in and was surprised to find the Sales Rank in the 5,000 range. On Sunday, it rocketed up into the three-digit range, peaking at 517 according to the Amazon tracker. It stayed above 1,000 for about a day, and has dropped back into the low four digits now.

This, of course, reflects the fact that the review was in the Sunday Book Review section, and those Sunday supplements are often distributed on Saturday afternoon. And the huge peak lines up with people getting the Sunday paper on, you know, Sunday. It probably didn’t hurt that, as noted on Twitter the review was teased on page A3.

This is, obviously, very nice from a selling-books-to-people standpoint; it’s also a nice reminder of the enormous scale and reach of the New York Times. For all that people bang on about “legacy media” and the death of newspapers at the hands of the Web and social media and all that, the review in the Sunday print edition was vastly more effective than the exact same review posted online on Tuesday, which in turn was all by itself as effective as everything we did to hype the book around its launch date.

(There’s probably also a comparison to be made between the effect of the Sunday Book Review and a review in the Science Times, which How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog got back in 2012. I’ll wait until the BookScan sales numbers are in to do that, though…)

Anyway, it’s been a fun week here, as you can probably tell…

The US edition of Breakfast with Einstein officially came out this past Tuesday, and while it’s not quite the same thrill as the release of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog was, nigh on ten years ago, it’s always exciting when a book comes out. And, of course, there’s new stuff out there to try to convince you to buy it:

— This video trailer for the book, with me narrating a cartoon from SugarShack Animation has been in the works for a little while, but finally came out:

— On Wednesday, I did a talk for the Secret Science Club, which drew a pretty good crowd to the Bell House in Brooklyn (which is in a neighborhood that looks like the setting for a Hold Steady song)

They were a great audience, laughing at the places they were supposed to and not when they weren’t, and asked a ton of good questions afterwards. I signed books (and answered more questions) afterwards, and generally enjoyed myself quite a bit.

— If you’re within visiting distance of Schenectady, I’m doing a signing at the Open Door tomorrow afternoon. No formal talk at this one, but I’m happy to answer questions and chat for a bit, and it supports a store full of really nice people.

— Various and sundry media items keep trickling out, including this review of a bunch of recent releases that includes some nice words about my book.

— When I was at the NASW meeting in October, I sat down for a bit with David Voss from APS News, who published a brief interview about the book and writing generally in this month’s issue.

— For the first time, I was thwarted in my attempt to see the book on a store shelf on release day– the closest big-box store didn’t have it, though it was in stock at their Saratoga branch, and neither of the local indie stores had copies out on Tuesday. That was kind of a bummer.

— While I’m still waiting for the first review on Amazon, it is selling at least some copies, because it manages to be near the top of a couple of their weirdly specific categories. The audio edition is actually slightly higher in their rankings, which surprised me, but then what do I know? Anyway, I’m temporarily enjoying looking at the Amazon rankings; I don’t have a sense of the sales yet, and won’t for another week or so.

That’s where things stand for now. There are at least two other podcast interviews that I’ve recorded that have not been released yet; you can be sure I’ll promote those when they drop. And I will, of course, continue to monitor all manner of media for reviews…

Breakfast with Einstein will be released tomorrow in the US, which means there are a bunch of things to report on the promotional front. First, a couple of events:

— I’m going to be doing the Secret Science Club bar night this Wednesday, the 12th, at 8pm at the Bell House in Brooklyn, NY. I did an event with them a few years ago at MassMOCA, which was good fun, and this time I’ll be on their home turf. If you’re in The City and would like to hear a bit about how weird quantum phenomena manifest in your morning routine, and maybe have a specialty cocktail, come on by.

— More local (to me), I’ll be doing a signing at our local indie bookstore, the Open Door on Saturday afternoon from 1-2:30 pm. They’re good people and these are always low-key, so if you’re in the Capital District and have time, come say hi.

Also, some virtual stuff that’s already happened:

— I did an interview with the Late Drinkers podcast, based out of Ireland, if you’d like to hear me interviewed by somebody with a much cooler accent than mine. This covered a lot of non-book territory relating to science communication more generally.

— I was interviewed for the People Behind the Science podcast, which covered a lot of my career history, in addition to the obligatory stuff about the forthcoming book. I had a good time talking about old times, here.

— A bit farther back, I recorded an interview with the Australian podcast Sci-gasm. This was the first interview I’ve done where I was encouraged to curse on the air– they explained that it’s considered polite in Australia to slip in a bit of profanity now and again.

A couple of others have been recorded, and will presumably be out sometime in the near future; I’ll share links when I have them.

It was a long holiday weekend in the US, but that didn’t stop fun news from coming in from overseas: The UK edition of Breakfast with Einstein made the Times of London’s list of Best Science Books of 2018!

The article is paywalled, alas, so you can’t easily read the whole thing unless you’re a subscriber, but the pull quote calls it a “fine example of scientific passion.” You can see the key passage as a screencap in this tweet from Oneworld.

If you’re in the UK, you can get the UK edition wherever you like to buy books; if you’re in the US you have to wait a bit before the US edition shows up in stores, but don’t let that stop you from pre-ordering copies to take care of all your winter solstice gift-giving needs…

I’ve been a little lax in my duty to bang on about Breakfast with Einstein (the UK edition is out now, the US edition is coming in December) at every opportunity. This is partly because I feel like people get a little tired of me endlessly talking about my own book.

So, here are some other people talking about my book; that is, the collection of very nice blurbs we got for the cover:

“Physics is everywhere and in every thing, and no one explains physics better than Chad Orzel. This book is a meal for your mind.”
—John Scalzi, bestselling author of The Consuming Fire

“Why don’t light bulbs fry us with deadly radiation? Why can’t you stick your hand through a solid wall? Why isn’t every scrap of metal a magnet? So many science books focus on the latest wacky cosmic discovery, but Orzel shows how the ordinary world around us is already plenty weird.”
—George Musser, contributing editor at Scientific American magazine and author of Spooky Action at a Distance

“As Chad Orzel wonderfully shows in Breakfast with Einstein, a full gamut of our commonplace daily activities—from boiling water for tea on a glowing range to taking and exchanging photos with our electronic cameras and phones—depends on quantum rules. By focusing on how quantum mechanisms guide the workings of his typical morning routine, Orzel cleverly brings those important principles close to home.”
—Paul Halpern, author of The Quantum Labyrinth

“William Blake saw the world in a grain of sand. Chad Orzel sees the universe in a slice of toast. Orzel is a master at bringing abstract ideas like relativity and quantum mechanics down to Earth without ever skimping on the science. This fun, engaging, and deeply informative book is definitive proof that everything is fascinating when you look closely enough. I’ll never see my breakfast the same way again.”
—Amanda Gefter, author of Trespassing on Einstein’s Lawn

“Breakfast with Einstein offers a clear and entertaining introduction to the wonders of quantum mechanics, showing that these principles surround us and are employed regularly in our everyday lives. Chad Orzel is the perfect guide to the world of atoms and photons, demonstrating that even our morning breakfast rituals are not possible without the wonders of modern physics.”
—James Kakalios, physics professor at the University of Minnesota and author of The Physics of Superheroes and The Physics of Everyday Things

“Orzel draws us in with the everyday experience. And then we find we are on a journey of more than 100 years of physics. The reader is rewarded not only with a deeper understanding of everyday things but also how physicists themselves look at the world every day.”
—David Saltzberg, professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA

“Chad Orzel’s new book is a masterfully told story about
the myriad ways that physics shapes our lives.”
—Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math

It’s enormously gratifying to have so many people whose work I respect say nice things about the book. Also a huge relief that none of the physicists who’ve read it pointed out any horrible glaring errors (there were some oversimplifications pointed out to me, but nothing I’m horribly embarrassed to see go to print…).

So, if my banging on about the book hasn’t convinced you to buy it, maybe these fine folks will? In which case, my publishers have kindly provided purchase links for the UK edition, and pre-order links for the US edition…