You can pre-order the book now at geni.us/firmament ! Note that for people in the US, Canada, and India (and a couple of other territories) the pre-order isn't available just yet because of complicated publishing reasons. Keep an eye on my social media, I'll post an announcement when the pre-order is available everywhere :)
Haven't really got a question about the book but just wanted to say that I've been following you since the first PhD weekly vlog and your journey is inspiring. You are very good at what you do, even though you might not always think you are! Hope the book is a smashing success!!
@@SimonClark Hey Simon, Thanks for sharing. I hope you can respond to my other comment about physics grad school when you can. I would really appreciate it. Thanks
@@SimonClark Yay! I'm glad there will be an audiobook and that you'll be narrating it, would sound weird to hear your words come out of someone else's mouth
Congratulations Simon! Thank you so much for sharing, I've found this really valuable, I've never known the editing stages or the way I would do research for a technical book if I ever were to write one. It's nice to know what to expect and it was a very fun video :)
It's been wonderful to see how your life has evolved from the days of your PhD to now publishing your first book! I'm an avid Audible user but I will be pre-ordering a physical copy too as I'd like to support you and your future writing career. Once pre-ordering has ended (the day up until release day I suppose) it would be very interesting to know how many pre-orders you received in total and possibly even through the different websites. I hope this is the beginning of a new chapter for you (pun intended) and the start of a journey that younger Simon could only dream of fulfilling. Regards, Laith.
Thanks Simon. I'm a RU-vidr who also wrote (and typeset) a book during the pandemic but it's been on "the shelf" .. this video has given me the inspiration to get it out (and/or do a publisher-bait video on it!)
Just wanted to say I've been watching your videos ever since you moved to Exeter, and I'm so pleased to hear about the book! As a bibliophile and a fan, I can't wait to get my hands on it :)
Congrats! It's interesting to hear how different your editorial experience is from mine. My publisher only did a fairly superficial copy editing before we went through four (!) rounds of proofs.
I also know that feeling of being torn between popular writing and academic writing. Had to unlearn popular writing when I did the academic stuff and papers; and then had to unlearn academic writing when I wanted to return to popular writing. Theoretically, I now should be able to switch between the two, but who knows. And, yes, I will get your book. Looking forward to it.
I just found your RU-vid channel and thought I would say hello! Listening here I found we have something in common, writing books. I have finished two novels to date and am working on my third. I just wanted to say that the strength of a good habit (Say writing X-number of words a day) can be the ultimate building block that makes a thing possible in the end. I learned this to be true and found your explanation to bring this (now Fact) to the front of my mind. Thank you for your videos and best of luck to you!
Being a musician with too much to say, I also have the dream of writing one day a book. I have no idea how I'd do it, but I guess I'll know better with time. Until then though, it's very inspiring to see you achieving your goals, especially with all the hard work you put into it. It's always a pleasure seeing your progress!
Thank you for this video, Simon. It's really good to watch this after knowing how well your book has been received. I'm doing a PhD at the University of Sheffield, and am interested in writing for a non-specialist audience. Appreciate the time and energy you put into your channel! Wishing you all the best.
Congrats! I’ll be adding your book to my shopping basket. Regarding the daily goal of achieving a set number of words, I’ve done the same thing since undergrad, doing minimum 200 words a day, it hasn’t failed me yet!
@@SimonClark I can appreciate that you wanted to stray away from LaTeX for writing it up, but is there any benefit to using something like Word versus just using a text based format like markdown or similar?
@@yerwol if it was just me on my own then no there wouldn't be, but the ability to add comments and suggest edits in Word means that the editor at the publisher can send over notes on a draft really easily. Plus word is just a nice app to use!
Awesome stuff. As more of a humanities enthusiast this will be my first foray into popular science. In other news, if you plan to continue the book club ruse I've just finished 'Open' by Johan Norberg. Beautifully written and up there with Sapiens as a fresh perspective on history and politics.
thanks for sharing your experience, writing a book is a dream for me as well but there seems to be a lot less information out there about the non-fiction process than for fiction. Hope the rest of the edits go smoothly 🥳
I'm surprised you haven't written a book before, since myself have created a lot of short stories, and only recently starting writing seriously, but your videos are incredibly engaging, and enjoyable to watch!
Hi Simon, just saw your face on TV, in ‘Weird Earth’ xD Anyway, great video! Breaking problems into bite-sized sub-tasks is one of my favorite tricks for staying motivated on a project^^
This is useful! Can you show a note taking process for how u note take on notion and compress them inot pages for the book? So there's a point you mentioned where each resource is a page and how you link them up to form points for a chapter. Would you be able to show that process perhaps with a screen sharing? It would really help us to get organized too if we ever wanted to know how to write a chapter or so from such a vast number of resources! Basically how can we use notion to go through the extremely tough knowledge filtering process? Thanks so much in advance and love your videos!
Glad you enjoyed! So when I mentioned filtering the information through to a book chapter page, I wasn't very clear. I didn't mean actually linking one database page to another (though I believe you can do that with /link page) but instead having the research page open on one screen and the chapter planning page open on another, and copying the relevant points across in the right order. So basically just the digital version of having two pieces of paper and taking notes from one to the other, though that's a process that's sped up by the search feature in Notion! I should also mention that I probably did this process as described maybe half the time - the other half of the time was a much more disorganised scramble through the resources, copying stuff over directly to the chapter planning page! I started out with the best of intentions, trying to be super organised, but sometimes my excitement got the better of me lol
@@SimonClark that's really helpful! Thanks so much! Hahah yes will keep that in mind. I'm sure there's some messy parts as well as always, all of us do!
Congrats, must be a great achievement. About the editing cycle, how did it compare with that of publishing a paper? Can't wait for the book to release and the video on science communication! :)
Hopefully soon! Apparently the legal team at the publisher starts the outsourcing process to markets like India and the USA only once the full manuscript is complete (which it now is, yay!). So hopefully we'll have a distributor for India sorted in the next couple of months - I'll do an announcement on my socials when this happens :)
Obviously don't have to know any of the figures and actual numbers, but would be a very interesting video to go through how you get paid for the book and how that process/structure works. Because, you have spent years working on it and I doubt you are given a salary that entire time.
Yes I might actually have to make this as a video! In terms of the guaranteed income (i.e. the advances) it's definitely not commensurate to 3 years of work, but then there's always the chance of the book doing well and so earning more. Give me a couple of years and I'll report in haha
My dream is to be a scientist and write sci-fi books along with it! Hope I get there someday...i am preparing for exams to get into a college of my choice and hope it happens soon! I have added all of your videos related to books into my playlist 'for the love of science' so that I could collect more information about physics and climate science! Yess! And I would like to make this world a better place to live in. Thank you for everything you do.... You certainly inspires me a lot.... Hoping to meet you someday. Thanks!
Oh yep I insisted we have a bibliography! Though I'm not sure how the references will appear in the text, or if they'll be hidden in notes at the back. There's something like 150 sources in total, mostly books and papers but a few more esoteric things like websites and conference proceedings as well.
@@SimonClark That's one more reason for me to buy the book! It would be great if they appeared as inline references, footnotes or in any other way that would let us know the source that was used for each section/piece of information; but I can see how that might disuade readers not used to more academic texts from buying the book. Either way, I'm happy that readers will have it easier to find out more information about a specific topic they have found interesting if they want to.
Hi Simon, I know this is off topic but I was wondering how you and your partner are finding your veganism? I really struggle with the necessary iron intake. And of course, I shall be reading your book.
Well pixel girl is 'vegan' - she doesn't eat animal products maybe 75% of the time. I'm closer to 99% of the time, but not militant about it. In terms of the iron I can't say I've noticed a problem. I take a supplement to be on the safe side, but I've not had any negative side effects from the change in diet at all really.
do you have to find as editor from the same feild or does the publisher provide their own ? if so how does a non expert get to weigh in on something and expert wrote (in a meaningful way besides picking up on typos - software can do that) ? ... won't this cause miscommunication in a world full of wikipedia level experts and social media researchers 😂😂😂 funny as it is - serious question (what makes a qualified editor?)
