The paper announces to itself it will “publish e-book best-seller lists in fiction and nonfiction beginning early next year.” From the way it reads, they will run dedicated ebook bestseller lists rather than incorporate ebook sales into any of the existing lists. Royalty Share will work with the newspaper, to both “provide data and offer an additional source of independent corroboration.” They do not indicate specific data sources they will draw from, so it’s not clear if they will cover the major accounts that dominate current ebook sales. Amusingly, they promise to compile data from independent booksellers along with publishers, […]
Bestseller Radar
100 Years Later, A Twain Bestseller
The first volume of Mark Twain’s posthumous autobiography from the University of California Press jumped to the top of bestseller lists at Amazon (currently No. 2) and Barnes & Noble (No. 3) yesterday. It has an official publication date of November 15, but the book (and ebook) was unveiled at a Mark Twain festival in Calavaras County, CA last Friday and is available now. Weekend publicity included a feature in the Philadelphia Inquirer and a segment on CBS Sunday Morning.Calavaras County coverage
Debut Novel Breaks Out in Canada, with Help from Costco
Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s debut novel SECRET DAUGHTER has had only modest sales in the US since its release in March despite being an Indie Next selection, but in Canada the book hit No. 1 on the Globe and Mail bestseller list in late spring and it continues to top lists there. The Globe and Mail says the book has “sales of about 6,000 copies a week and still climbing,” calling “its surprise success the juiciest mystery in Canadian publishing.” By their account, the trigger was the book’s selection by an “anonymous buyer” at Costco’s Ottawa office. Harper Canada vp of […]
Blair’s Opening Sale Sets Record, Sort Of
Tony Blair’s memoir A JOURNEY sold 92,060 copies in the UK in the first four days on sale, in outlets tracked by Nielsen BookScan UK (which covers nearly the entire market over there). That qualifies as the biggest opening for a memoir since Nielsen started recording book sales in 1998, the Bookseller reports, though Margaret Thatcher’s THE DOWNING STREET YEARS was estimated to have sold 120,000 copies when it was first released in 1993.Bookseller In more Blair news, his “secret” book party is going ahead as planned tomorrow night at the Tate Modern, despite threats of protest from the Stop […]
Mockingjay’s Big Opening Sends Scholastic Back to Press
Scholastic announced that they have sold more than 450,000 print and ebook copies of Suzanne Collins’ MOCKINGJAY in the first week on sale, and have gone back to press for another 400,000 copies. Print sales in outlets tracked by Nielsen BookScan were a little over 350,000 copies in the first five days of sale, through August 28. That easily ranks among the biggest opening weeks this year, well above even the opening sale for even Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest in May. (Little, Brown Children’s said they sold 350,000 units of Stephenie Meyer’s The Short Second […]
Ingraham’s Book As Bestselling “Nonfiction”
Media Matters is worked up that the New York Times bestseller list charts Laura Ingraham’s THE OBAMA DIARIES as nonfiction “even though it is clearly a fictional creation.” But Sam Tanenhaus uses the MILLIE’S BOOK defense, and says “there seems to be a history on the best-seller list that if a book deals in a direct way with politics and campaigns or current events then it has been historically listed as non-fiction.” He adds, “we do see books of this nature and you do not dignify them by calling them fiction. In the end, it is a kind of political […]