How to Teach Physics to Your Dog: Obsessive Update

Various and sundry updates regarding How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, now available wherever books are sold:

• Well, ok, that last sentence is a slight exaggeration. I spent a little while punching ZIP codes of places I’ve lived into the Barnes and Noble page, and couldn’t find any stores that have copies in stock. Grumble, mutter, grump. Borders on the other hand, has sporadic availability. At least one copy has been sold in-store at the Clifton Park Borders, because a friend bought one there last week (the web page now lists it as “Out of Stock” for that store, so maybe they only had the one…). If you’re in New England, and want to buy a copy at a big-box store, Borders is your best bet.
• Last week, the book spent a solid 77 hours in the top 1000 at Amazon, which was pretty amazing. It’s now slide back into the 2500-3000 range, which is still pretty darn good, but a bit of a let-down after seeing it peak at 396. Then again, it’s hardly unreasonable for the sales to drop over the weekend including Christmas, when I didn’t even post stuff on the blog urging people to buy it.
• I’ve updated the pet gallery with two firsts in one: our first cat picture, and out first pet pictured with the Kindle edition. I’ve also updated the Reviews page with pull quotes from last week’s reviews.
• One of the problems with releasing a book three days before Christmas is that it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to do major publicity efforts right when it comes out. As a result, while I know there are some things in the pipeline (I’ve got a couple of interview-type activities scheduled in the next week or two), I don’t expect much of it to hit before January. I will attempt to retain my Zen calm during this period, but if I seem ultra-fidgety, that’s why.

So that’s where things stand as of 9am Monday morning. There will be a sales rank tracker number-crunching post about an hour from now, if you like hard-core geekery, and I’ll try to get some actual physics up later. We’re having guests this afternoon, though– our Senior Middle East Correspondent is in the States– so I may be slow to respond to emails or comments.