Michael Wolff’s FIRE AND FURY continued to sell through in significant quantities, moving as many hardcovers in the sales week ending January 28 as the next nine books combined on Bookscan’s bestseller list. But the big surprise of the week was to see YouTube psychologist and professor at the University of Toronto Jordan B. Peterson’s new book 12 RULES FOR LIFE sitting at No. 2, selling approximately 58,000 hardcovers in its opening week — and published by Random House Canada rather than a US imprint. Agent Sally Harding at CookeMcDermid Agency sold the book (originally titled DO NOT BOTHER CHILDREN WHEN THEY ARE SKATEBOARDING: […]
Bestseller Radar
Fire and Fury Sales News
Bookscan shows tracked US sales of the hardcover edition of FIRE AND FURY of a little under 29,000 copies in the first two days on sale (last Friday and Saturday) — still enough to make the book No. 1 in a light sales week, and just the beginning with a reported 1 million-plus copies on the way. Little Brown UK announced that they “currently have 330,000 copies out with customers in home and export and have also sold tens of thousands of e-books and audiobooks over the past few days.” Most UK stores just began receiving inventory this week, even […]
Amazon’s Year-End Charts
Following the introduction of Amazon Charts in May, Amazon has created a year-end package of 2017: This Year in Books, powered by Charts. The “most read fiction” list, topped by The Handmaid’s Tale, includes four Harry Potter titles (available for free through Prime Reading and Kindle Unlimited) and one house title, from May, Mark Sullivan’s Beneath A Scarlet Sky from Lake Union Publishing. Dan Brown’s Origin, at No. 9, is the only other 2017 release in their top 10. Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck is their most read nonfiction book. (Though his second book was […]
Sales Starts: Clinton Tops a Big Week for New Titles
A wave of big books landed last Tuesday, with Hillary Clinton’s What Happened registering the biggest opening week, topping Bookscan’s chart with just under 168,000 print copies sold across the outlets they track — which publisher Simon & Schuster notes is “the biggest first week sales recorded by any author for a hardcover nonfiction title published since 2012.” (That’s almost twice the opening week sales in June 2014 of Hard Choices, which moved approximately 86,000 print books — and was said to have comprised total sales of 100,000 to 120,000 units in the first week — though well behind opening […]
Clinton V. Trolls: Movement on Both Sides
Following Tuesday’s release of Hillary Clinton’s What Happened, publisher Simon & Schuster lamented to the AP that the Amazon product page was filled with customer “reviews” that were commentary on Mrs. Clinton rather than appraisals of her books. Publisher Jonathan Karp said, “It seems highly unlikely that approximately 1,500 people read Hillary Clinton’s book overnight and came to the stark conclusion that it is either brilliant or awful.” Meanwhile, on their own Amazon purged approximately 900 “reviews” of the book, saying they ‘violate our community guidelines,” as of early this morning displaying just under 600 reviews in all. But that book page […]
Regnery Gives Up On NYT Bestseller Persecution Story with One Final Persecution Story
For years conservative authors and publishers have thrived on stories about how their books should rank higher on the NYT bestseller list and it’s rigged against their titles (except when they’re at the top). Now Regnery Publishing has declared that it will no longer bill its authors at “New York Times bestsellers” on their book jackets and won’t pay author bonuses based on the paper’s rankings — generating one final round of stories about the decision. Regnery president Marji Ross wrote to authors, “Increasingly, it appears that the Times has gathered book sale data in a manner which prioritizes liberal-themed books […]