What if I wrote a book?

Posted bydavean 1,117 Comments on What if I wrote a book?

For the last couple years, I’ve been answering your science questions on What If.

Today, I’m excited to announce that the What If? book is coming!

What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions will be published September 2nd by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Starting today you can pre-order it from your favorite bookseller (Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Indie Bound).  There are also foreign editions, including a UK and Commonwealth edition and a German edition.

As I’ve sifted through the letters submitted to What If every week, I’ve occasionally set aside particularly neat questions that I wanted to spend a little more time on. This book features my answers to those questions, along with revised and updated versions of some of my favorite articles from the site. (I’m also including my personal list of the weirdest questions people have submitted.)

Preorder today to get a copy as soon as it comes out!

1,117 replies on “What if I wrote a book?”

  1. I hope @bittorrent was actually just the guys from the now defunct xkcdsucks trying to troll xkcd fans.

    Because if he’s a real person he sort of sucks.

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  3. Any links for Canadians? It’s on amazon.ca but there is no pricing and no option to pre-order it.

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  5. Dude, I’m not surprised someone wanted to publish a book like this. The concept itself is fascinating, and the way you engage the questions is entertaining and really informative. I freaking love it.

    Congratulations!!

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  6. Will you sell the English book in Germany as well? I hate translations, they are usually terrible.

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  7. Confirmed. We here in Germany are tormented by terrible localizations, forever seeking US-originals.

    One reason why torrenting media is still so popular in this corner.

    So are you saying we have to pirate it?

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  8. I have the same problem with italian translation, except that not only they’re terrible, they’re also very expensive (the italian edition of a 15$ programming book was being sold at 70€).
    Just order the book from the UK, you’ll pay a extra pound of shipping and nothing more.

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  9. Just placed by preorder through Amazon. Very much looking forward to the book. Tuesdays have become one of my favorite internet days because of What If.

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  12. Just FYI, within 24 hours of announcing this book it became Amazon’s #2 best seller. Not bad for a book that doesn’t even come out for another half a year.

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  13. Hang on…how are citations going to work in this? Those are some of the best parts of the What Ifs! Still gonna preorder this.

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  14. Can you please provide some more information concerning the differences between the uk and us versions? Different spelling, different units, extra pages? Might be of interest for anybody going for the English version but living outside of those two areas.

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  15. @Deutschlandmensch: The englisch version is also available from amazon.de:

    @Dovakin: just like they work in every other book? Footnotes!

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  17. I don’t understand why wouldn’t there be a digital version when the fan base of xkcd is mainly composed of people who pratically live in the digital world.
    The shipping to where I live is more than the price of the book itself. I would right away buy it if wasn’t for that…
    I think that’s a bit sad.

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  18. Would you consider a version in Portuguese? If you do, we can talk about translation.

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  23. @Jeff Heckey: Generally as long as you buy the book new, I’m pretty sure it counts the same amount towards royalties no matter where you buy it or how much you pay for it. If you really want to go out of your way, you can go into your local bookstore and request the book if they don’t already have it. They’ll usually order a few extra copies, which means the extras will be on the shelf for other people to buy, and that helps.

    Source: I published a similar type of book, and that’s how it worked for me.

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  26. What about people who you’ve selected their questions (and set aside). Do they get notified? Do they get a free book?

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  27. What will be the differences between the US and UK editions? Anything in terms of the actual book? Or just things like having the price in pounds on the back instead of dollars…
    But seriously, are there any differences?

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  29. No high speed?
    No velociraptor?
    No river of molten lava?
    No bobcat?
    meh…
    (pre-ordered anyway)

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  32. @Felix: on amazon there’s the option for a Kindle version. And from what I can see from the B&N site, they also will offer an ebook version (that site won’t load correctly for me).

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  33. For those wondering if the alt-text will be in the book, the XKCD Volume 0 book DID include “footnote-ish” alt texts. I guess the alt-text will be in this book too, probably as legends for the images.

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  34. I would totally buy this book if I weren’t afraid he would ship me a bobcat instead.

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  35. I’m worried you *wont* ship me a bobcat.
    And seriously – Why the large price diff.? $15 != £15. €15 would’ve been closer though.
    Also, for the German readers: You do know that it is actually possible to order your books from the UK, right? 😉
    And besides. Amazon doesn’t usually have the highest p&p costs within Europe.

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  36. “And from what I can see from the B&N site, they also will offer an ebook version (that site won’t load correctly for me).” Same here since I tried to submit my order.

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  39. I have only one concern. Will the hover text that the images had remain as captions?

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  40. Hi, what is the difference between the standard and the UK version of the book, other than making spelling corrections for things like colour and analyse?

    Thanks 🙂

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  41. I just wanted to point out that when I added this to my Wish List the items that came up as “Customers who bought… also bought” was a pack of 10 Zinc plated nuts… Couldn’t get more random than that. Maybe this draws a question “What if I were to write the entire What if? book on the threads of zinc nuts. How many nuts would it take?” http://i.imgur.com/cDFgQ4u.png

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  42. What if we all wrote a book?

    My guess is that there would be a lot more books of lower quality.

    Good luck with the rest of yours though.

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  43. I fear the pictures will not have mouse-over text capability in print format. This makes me sad. I still want this book.

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  44. Every page is lenticular printed, with the mouse-over text viewable by moving your head slightly to the right.

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  45. Will you be alerting those people who posed questions that you haven’t answered on the website, but that you will be publishing in the book. Or will you at least list the names of those submitters on the website?
    Or in a less roundabout way: “ooh, ooh, did you do mine?!”

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  46. Man. I would love to see this in .pdf as well (echoing some comments mentioned above) because I would like to use parts of it in my physical science class. Of course, I guess I could just direct students to the live comic….

    Anyway, I think that’s awesome and I’ll be buying one. Like I said, I’ve been thinking about ways to incorporate segments of “What If” into my science curriculum for a while and plan to launch that next year. Thanks for doing all the awesome work!

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  47. I think Bittoreent could be the master Randall himself just to make the people freak out.

    im currently owning a digital copy of Volume 0 thorugh humblebundle.com

    that was a great thing of u to do and i hope u will publish what if in the next book-bundle too!

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  48. If someone gave an ebay account an unlimited amount of money and orders to buy a random item every day, what are the odds that it would buy this book and a bobcat in tandem (assuming the book had become available for purchase)?

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