I think we can all agree that I’ve been admirably restrained with respect to talking about my upcoming book before it even appears. (Maybe you don’t think so, but believe me — I’ve been restraining myself.) Die-hards have been able to follow the excitement at the Facebook page, where fascinating details about cover blurbs and review copies have been politely sequestered.
All that is about to end soon! Yesterday I received in the mail an actual copy of the hardcover, a tangible artifact testifying to the reality of this long-anticipated event. Here it is, rubbing shoulders with a few other well-known bestsellers.
The official release date is January 7. Yes, there will be a Kindle edition; at some point later in January there will even be an audio book. And I’m certainly not going to stop you from ordering it. But my publisher tells me that what would be really great is if a bunch of people ordered it exactly on January 7. So that’s when I’ll really be encouraging you.
Even after the book is out, I don’t want to turn the blog into all book, all the time. But I do want to try a book club experiment, where we go through individual chapters, one week at a time, with me revealing some of the thought processes that went into each chapter and all of us having a back-and-forth discussion. Should be fun!
No formal book tour, but I’ll be doing a few readings and events. Check the Facebook page or book web page for more.
I was quite disappointed to search for the book on Audible (I figured I’d put it on my wish list) and come up with a book on how to rediscover the ageless purpose of God instead.
I’m excited to read your book!
Will the audio book be read by you?
Nope — they got a professional.
Alright, the Bible is an important historical text, but the Da Vinci Code… right next your your book? Who’s coffee table is this?
Wait a while before you do “…where we go through individual chapters, one week at a time, with me revealing some of the thought processes that went into each chapter and …” so that many people have a chance to read it.
Yee-ha! I’m not sure I can wait a month to order the Kindle version, even knowing I won’t be able to start reading it before the release date. In order to help me and your legions of (im)patient fans, is the idea behind waiting until 1/7 that only orders in a limited timeframe count for bestseller list purposes on the NY Times, Amazon, etc.?
Jud, that’s exactly right. The more people buy the book on the first day, the more likely it is to get a good Amazon rank, so the more likely it is that other people will see and buy it, boosting the rank further… That’s the theory, anyway.
Sean, if I pre-order ‘From Eternity to Here’ at Amazon, will that be counted as a Jan 7th first-day order? I decided to buy it after hearing your May 29th, 2009 “Dark Forces” presentation in the Virtual World (VW) of Second Life. For interested people, here’s the MICA [Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics] page linking to your slideset and audio from that talk – http://mica-vw.org/wiki/index.php/MICA_Seminars.
Paradox Olbers in SL/Spike R. MacPhee in RL
MICA member
Sorry if I’m too hard in case but here is the deal: you promise to try a book club experiment each week or month, I promise I’ll buy the book on January 7.
Nothing personnal.
Paradox, pre-orders count right away, they don’t accumulate in anticipation of the release date. I certainly won’t discourage anyone from ordering the book right now, but the impact of such orders decays away gradually over time.
Why isn’t your copy of Sarah Palin’s book in the picture?
I can’t believe you used the wrong Amazon link to your own book.
http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Here-Rediscovering-Ageless-Purpose/dp/1434768708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260224951&sr=8-1
Also, you’ve been spelling your own name wrong.
Sean, how many promotions for your book do your faithful blog readers have to endure before we each get a free copy?
The distribution of free copies runs contrary to my pecuniary interests.
Perhaps it could be renamed From Eternity To Here To The Bank?
Gotta love modern science.
Just curious, how did the time and effort investment in writing this book compare to the investment in writing the Spacetime and Geometry textbook?
Have a specific question about your book.
About 30 years ago, Paul Davies wrote a technical book, The Physics of Time Asymmetry, which I read with great interest. He sketched in detail the arrows of time: cosmological, thermodynamical, electrodynamical, and quantum mechanical, but I don’t believe a hierarchy was ever asserted.
If I understand your thesis correctly, you go with the thermodynamic one. If so, in what order do the other ones descend, or are they applicable only in limited physical contexts ?
Thanx !
Hello Sean,
What I know is that it is not very easy to sell some serious books, and for this we can refer to the story of Descartes for example ; but the fact that you are in a university should help normally, it could even help a lot. Good luck !
Boo DaVinci Code. Might as well put Twilight on there…jkjk
I’m excited for your book release! Definitely put a reminder (on facebook or here) and I’ll help your ratings.
Isn’t the fact that many scientists would rather focus time and energy on writing books about general science instead of actual research an indication their field is hopelessly stuck?
Eagerly anticipating. I pre-ordered a while back.
Anton, in both cases the book-writing timescale was between one and two years. The textbook took more time (there were a lot more equations), but spread out over two periods of energetic work.
Jimbo, the interesting arrows of time to me are the ones that actually involve irreversibility, so the cosmological one doesn’t count. The others, I believe, all reduce to the thermodynamic arrow. But it’s not easy to prove that beyond reasonable doubt.
I do plan on purchasing and reading your book, and I hope it is more readable than Barbour’s “End of Time” which was, basically, unreadable. Try though I might, I could penetrate his prose or his ideas. In other posts, I believe you stated that you do not concur with his hypothesis. Do you address Barbour’s idea at all in your book (partly I’m hoping someone else will explain Barbour’s idea to me)?
Can the audio book please be narrated by Salman Rushdie?