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 […]
Bestseller Radar
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 […]
People, Etc.
At Random House Children’s, Stephanie McKinley has been promoted to senior digital developer; Kelly Mcgauley is now senior marketing manager, trade marketing; Mallory Matney moves up to associate manager, marketing operations and consumer show; and Alissa Nigro has been promoted to marketing associate, trade marketing. At Chronicle Books, Taylor Norman has been promoted to editor for children’s. Jamie Real has joined as assistant managing editor for children’s (she was managing director for Litquake); Sandy Frank has joined as junior designer. Daniel O’Brien has joined the American Booksellers Association staff as a member relationship manager, serving the SIBA, SCIBA, NCIBA, PNBA, and MPIBA regions. He takes over from […]
Handbook for Gaming Sales
The ABA has admitted belatedly that Lani Sarem’s Handbook for Mortals “should not have made it onto the Indie Bestsellers list” last week (where it was listed as the No. 2 young adult fiction hardcover) and “it isn’t appearing this week.” The organization added, “We’re always reviewing our procedures to improve them, and, following this, we are refining the way we do things.” That leaves USA Today as the only organization to have stood by including the book on a bestseller list, ranking it at No. 34 last week. Separately, Thu-Huong Ha at Quartz has done some good follow-up, and after first […]
NYT Removes New YA Book From Bestseller List, Following Indications of Planned, Bulk Purchases
The New York Times reissued their Young Adult hardcover bestseller list for sales through the week ending August 19 early Thursday evening to eliminate Lani Sarem’s Handbook for Mortals, which had debuted at No. 1, after an online campaign (including input from indie booksellers) helped to establish what appears to have been programmatic bulk orders placed through strategic stores, specifically designed to put the book on the NYT’s list. Jordan Cohen at the NYT told us, “After investigating the inconsistencies in the most recent reporting cycle, we’ve decided that the sales for ‘Handbook for Mortals’ do not meet our criteria […]