Smolin book #1 physics bestseller in UK (#23 in all 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.