NPD Bookscan reported print book sales for the week ending April 11 of 12.47 million units. While that is nicely higher than the previous week, the proper comparison is to the week just before Easter a year ago, since book sales always spike measurably right before the holiday. The comparable week a year ago — ending April 20 — saw sales of 13.97 million units, making this year’s holiday week down over 10.7 percent in comparison. Per the trend during the pandemic, juvenile books continue to account for most of the week-over-week gains, registering sales of 6.385 million units (compared […]
Bestseller Radar
Briefs
At Canongate, Andrea Joyce has stepped down as rights director after 13 years with the company. Jessica Neale succeeds her as rights and contracts director. Forthcoming Penguin Random House will publish a digital cookbook on May 5 to benefit restaurants and their workers, priced at $5.99, FAMILY MEAL: Recipes from Our Community. It features over 40 recipes by chefs and home cooks who publish with PRH imprint, covering what they are cooking and drinking at home right now, and all proceeds will benefit the RWCF COVID 19 Crisis Relief Fund. It includes a foreword from Restaurant Workers’ Community Fund co-founder […]
Continuing Strong Sales For American Dirt, A Very Stable Genius
AMERICAN DIRT by Jeanine Cummins sold another 36,000 hardcovers in its second week on sale, as tracked by NPD Bookscan. That left it as the clear No. 1 title in adult fiction — though A VERY STABLE GENIUS by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker remained the No. 1 title overall, growing in its second week with sales of 59,000 hardcovers, followed by PROFILES IN CORRUPTION by Peter Schweizer as the No. 2 title, ahead of American Dirt. For the same sales week, Bookstat.com estimated additional sales of 21,400 ebooks for American Dirt, and 16,700 digital audios. In those formats, it […]
Next Week’s Bestellers
We told you last week in our first experimental post that BookStat.com showed online pre-orders for AMERICAN DIRT of 9,190 hardcovers; 10,436 ebooks; and 3,088 audiobooks. From publication day through Saturday June 25, to align with bestseller lists, BookStat shows online sales of another 8,913 copies, ebook sales of 10,971 units, and digital audio sales of 13,623. Since Bookstat is monitoring online print sales for Amazon only, that suggests the full print sale will register at somewhere between two and three times what they monitor — so, with pre-orders included since that’s how bestseller lists work in opening week, a […]
Next Week’s Bestsellers
We are beginning some experimental work with BookStat, the service that tracks and estimates online book sales across all formats, to provide some market insights not previously available. One feature of the system we particularly like (and helped to inspire) is that it tracks pre-orders on a daily basis, right alongside sales of books already on the market, providing a broader view of titles attracting interest from readers. That feature becomes particularly interesting for tracking new release titles (and over time helping to distinguish between actual opening week sales of books, versus their accrued pre-orders). It also means we can […]
Briefs
Film/TV Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, through their company Escapist Fare, have signed a multi-year overall deal with CBS TV Studios. That deal starts with a limited series adaptation of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for Showtime, but includes a number of other projects in development. Akiva Goldsman and Alex Kurtzman will executive produce Kavalier & Clay, and Paramount Television will produce (since Paramount Pictures owns the film/TV rights). Initiatives This year James Patterson will give holiday gifts totaling over $200,000 to Barnes & Noble booksellers around the country as well, in addition to his annual holiday bonuses […]