I had a signing yesterday at the Barnes & Noble in Vestal, NY, which drew a smallish crowd mostly of friends and family. SteelyKid came, of course, and while she spent most of her time bopping about other parts of the store, she came over to the signing area while I was signing books for people after reading a bit. They had a big stack of copies of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, and she started picking them up and handing them to me.
“No, honey,” I said, “Those are for other people. Give them to somebody else.” So she happily ran one over to my mother. And then to one of my aunts. And then I stopped paying attention.
Until my mother came over to return a copy to the pile, and told me that SteelyKid had been running up to total strangers and trying to give them copies of my book…. Which was really a brilliant marketing strategy, on reflection. I should’ve tried that earlier…
Also yesterday, I was on the Science Fantastic radio show with Michio Kaku. The interview was taped this past Monday, and appears in the second hour of the three-hour show (the first hour had Ian Stewart talking about his new book, the third hour was questions from callers). If you didn’t hear it, but would like to, there are a whole bunch of stations carrying it that run it today, many of them offering audio streams over the Internet (which is how I listened to it, and recorded my bit…). I think it went pretty well, but I’d be happy to hear from somebody else.
And that’s your How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog publicity update for today.
That’s got to be the best marketing strategy ever!