Laura Brown has joined Park Row Books as editor, moving over from the Harper imprint.
Opening Sales
THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING by Bill Clinton and James Patterson sold approximately 152,000 hardcovers in the first week on sale, as tracked by Bookscan through the outlets they monitor. The co-publishers trumpet it as the best first week sale for a work of adult hardcover fiction since two years ago.
Hachette Book Group ceo Michael Pietsch says in the release, “By any measure, this was a terrific opening week of sales, one that exceeded even our own optimistic projections.” Knopf Doubleday chairman Sonny Mehta adds, “We are heartened by the response to the work, especially among readers.”
That first week hardcover sale is a little below Hillary Clinton’s opening week for WHAT HAPPENED last September (168,000), and it looks like the fourth or fifth biggest hardcover opening this year. James Comey’s A HIGHER LOYALTY is on top (360,000 copies), with Michael Wolff’s FIRE AND FURY selling 220,000 copies over the first 10 days after being moved up, and Joanna Gaines’ MAGNOLIA TABLE started with over 171,000 copies. (A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MARLON BUNDO took in big orders in the first 24 hours but the stock didn’t catch up to complete the sales for a while.)
Awards
Ireland’s Mike McCormack won the International Dublin literary award for Solar Bones. The novel is “written in a single sentence that flows over 270-odd pages, and spans a single day.” The judges called it “formally ambitious, stylistically dauntless and linguistically spirited.”