Smolin book #1 physics bestseller in UK (#23 in all books)

[marcus]

I hadn't checked for a while and just now looked at the UK amazon physics bestseller list. TWP was #1
with storewide salesrank 362, still doing well.

As a benchmark for comparison the four most popular string books (today, at the time I looked) were
Greene fabric (salesrank 700)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0141011114/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Kaku parallel (salesrank 8489)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0141014636/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Greene elegant (salesrank 9451)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/009928992X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

Susskind cosmic (salesrank 15,780)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316155799/?tag=pfamazon01-20

(too much trouble to find the fifth, not even on the top 100 physics books list)

when I checked the next day at around the same time the four string front-runners were the same except with Susskind replaced by Randall
Randall warped
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0141012978/?tag=pfamazon01-20
========

Smolin book, UK edition, appeared on 22 February 2007
remarkable performance

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0713997990/?tag=pfamazon01-20

========
EDIT as of 10 Central today 3 May, the salesrank ratio was 12.8
i.e. judging by UK amazon salesrank, Smolin's book was doing 12-or-so time better than the average of the four currently most popular string

 

[ccdantas]

Hi Marcus,

I think you would have to compare how those books performed as a function of their own release dates. I mean, how did they perform in their first week, first month, etc. I don't know whether you will find this information at the amazon site though.

 

[marcus]

Hi Marcus,

I think you would have to compare how those books performed as a function of their own release dates. I mean, how did they perform in their first week, first month, etc. I don't know whether you will find this information at the amazon site though.

Hi Christine, nice to hear from you!
If I wanted to compare TWP performance WITH A PARTICULAR OTHER BOOK then I would have to compare the sales TRAJECTORIES. I would need data for each month starting when the book was released in the UK market.

But what I am using as a benchmark is not a particular book or any fixed set of books. I am using the four or five most popular books of a certain kind whatever they happen to be that day

What I have found is that this kind of index is fairly stable, with string in the US market----particular books come and go, new ones enter the market and may be a hit or may be ignored, but the average salesrank of the top five, whatever the top five books happen to be, serves as a pretty good standard of comparison.

In any case this has worked so far. There are roughly some 12-20 string books, some are old, some just came on the market recently. New ones appear all the time. The popularity of these books goes all over the place and the makeup of the front-runners can be expected to change. But if on a given day you take the five lowest salesranks and average them you get a reasonably stable index, not tied to the trajectory of anyone particular book, which maybe tracks the public interest in that general topic.

Does that make sense to you?

Of course one could expect that the Smolin book sales will saturate and eventually DECLINE relative to this index-----because the index is not tied to a particular book but only to a general level of interest, while the Smolin, as an individual book, will have an ARC. Decline is something I want to be able to identify as well as rise.

So far I haven't been paying much attention to the UK market, just looking in occasionally. Maybe I won't do any systematic watching. but it is tempting because the TWP performance in UK is completely surprising to me.

In salesrank terms (not in absolute number of copies sold, I guess, because the UK is a smaller market) TWP is doing even better in the UK in its first three months than it did in its first three months in the US.

 

[marcus]

as of 10 Central today 3 May, the salesrank ratio was 12.8
i.e. judging by UK amazon salesrank, Smolin's book was doing 12-or-so time better than the average of the four currently most popular string

as of 10 central 5 May, ratio was 17.3
(the four most popular string books, that time, were fabric, zwiebach, warped and elegant)

as of 10 central 6 May, ratio was 10.7
(the four currently most popular string books were fabric, warped, elegant, and parallel)

 

[josh1]

amazon Canada ranks smolin`s book 9,047 of all books and it doesn't even make it to the top 100 of all physics books.

 

[marcus]

thanks for the idea. I remember you mentioning that you're Canadian. That bookmarket could be interesting too---though smaller it might lead or lag the UK or US, or tell us something about different media climate. Just guessing. So I checked amazon.com just in case.

I looked at the General Physics list at Amazon.ca
and curiously enough WOIT'S book was briefly at the top of the string-related!
then came two by Brian Greene, and then Smolin, trailing along behind, and then Susskind and finally Lisa Randall. Very different picture from UK or US!

Here's the physics list
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/956718/&tag=
and here's the general physics list
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/956728/&tag=

here are some Canada amazon links in case anyone is interested in particular books:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0060531096/?tag=pfamazon01-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0618551050/?tag=pfamazon01-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465092756/?tag=pfamazon01-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316155799/?tag=pfamazon01-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375727205/?tag=pfamazon01-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375708111/?tag=pfamazon01-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0375412883/?tag=pfamazon01-20 hardcover
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393058581/?tag=pfamazon01-20 hardcover
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385477058/?tag=pfamazon01-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400033721/?tag=pfamazon01-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521860695/?tag=pfamazon01-20 becker text

in case anyone is curious, as of 10 central 6 May, the Canada TWP salesrank was 10,006, and the benchmark average of string top five was 9141.4
so the Smolin book, in Canada, was selling only about 0.9 as well as the average string topfiver, judging by salesranks.
The five most popular string books, when I checked, were fabric, elegant, cosmic landscape, becker textbook, fabric (hard).

 

[marcus]

since both the CA and the UK markets are possibly of interest, I decided to make the same observation at the same time (noon central) as I do the US:
comparing Smolin TWP salesrank with the average topfive string book.

8 May noon central

UK string topfive benchmark/smolin = 13,272.0/2022 = 6.6

CA string topfive benchmark/smolin = 12,874.6/2702 = 4.8

US string topfive benchmark/smolin = 5289.6/2843 = 1.9

9 May noon central

UK string topfive benchmark/smolin = 25,432.2/3150 = 8.1

CA string topfive benchmark/smolin = 10, 806.6/2677 = 4.0

US string topfive benchmark/smolin = 6036.4/3299 = 1.8

in case anyone is interested on that particular day (9 May) the UK topfive string happened to be
fabric, Becker text, warped, elegant, parallel
and the CA topfive happened to be
elegant, Kiritsis text, fabric, warped, cosmic landscape (the Susskind book)

but the makeup of the topfive turn out to change from day to day quite a bit.

BTW the paperback edition of "Trouble with Physics...and What Comes Next" will be ORANGE instead of the electric turquoise blue of the hardcover edition.
the paperback version is scheduled to come out 4 September 2007----shoes-joke cartoon on the cover, same as before.

roughly speaking, judging by salesranks from those two days----8 and 9 May---the Smolin book is selling not quite TWICE as well as the average string book in the top five most popular.
And in UK and CA it is selling roughly 4-8 times better than the average string topfiver, serving as our benchmark for comparison.

 

[marcus]

There seems to be some interest in how TWP is doing in the UK and Canada markets, so I've recorded salesranks posted as of noon central for several consecutive days, and also recorded the ratio:
string topfive benchmark/smolin

UK amazon

08 may 13,272.0/2022 = 6.6
09 may 25,432.2/3150 = 8.1
10 may 17,717.8/1194 = 14.8
11 may 18,207.2/1194 = 15.2
12 may 30,189.4/484 = 62.4
13 may 18,125.0/933 = 19.4
14 may 11,045.0/984 = 11.2

CA amazon

08 may 12,874.6/2702 = 4.8
09 may 10,806.6/2677 = 4.0
10 may 11,201.4/2921 = 3.8
11 may 8396.2/194 = 43.3
12 may 5819.2/1870 = 3.1
13 may 6751.4/4832 = 1.4
14 may 7315.2/8146 = 0.9

To illustrate, around 8-10 may, judging by salesranks the Smolin book "Trouble with physics...and what comes next" was selling some four-to-eight times better than the string benchmark: the average salesrank of whatever the five most popular string books were that day.