The ScienceBlogs upgrade put a bit of a kink in my plans for monthly book hype, but I didn’t want to let the day pass without noting that the official release date for How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is five months from today. (You can pre-order it from Amazon, where they’re offering to pair it with a book by some theorist guy).
I don’t have any splashy announcements to roll out for the five-month countdown. I have, however, updated dogphysics.com, adding a page for the recent contest winners, and updating the book information page with blurb quotes (actually, three of the four so far– I got one from Tobias Buckell in email this morning, but haven’t added it to the list yet).
I’m particularly psyched by the one that’s first on the list, from Spencer Quinn, author of Dog On It. He was a late addition to the list of potential blurbers, thrown on because, well, why not? He wrote a talking-dog mystery, I wrote a talking-dog science book…
I’m glad to get that blurb not just because it means my book was interesting enough to stand out from what must be a flood of books involving dogs, but because his is the first blurb from a non-science type. The other two are from Sean Carroll, a professional scientist, and Cory Doctorow, a professional geek. Quinn’s blurb helps demonstrate that the book works for a non-technical audience, and that’s great to have.
I’m still waiting on several others (the deadline for blurbage isn’t for another couple of weeks), but I’m really happy with what I’ve got so far. We’ve already got enough to ensure a good cover, though, and to further reassure me that this whole thing isn’t completely crazy.