As threatened last week, Alcor Life Extension filed suit in New York Supreme Court against author (and former company coo) Larry Johnson and publisher Vanguard Press, seeking a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order blocking today’s publication of his book FROZEN: My Journey Into the World of Cryonics, Deception and Death. After hearing oral arguments on Monday, Judge James Yates denied the motion, unwilling to exercise prior restraint. The book received pre-publication attention over the weekend following reports that the book alleges the Arizona cryonics business mistreated the frozen head of former baseball great Ted Williams, hitting his head with […]
New Releases/Forthcoming
Palin Goin' Early
Sarah Palin completed her manuscript ahead of schedule after working with collaborator Lynn Vincent and Harper has moved up the release date from next spring to November 17. The publisher has announced a planned 1.5 million-copy first printing of GOING ROGUE: An American Life. They will not make an e-book available until December 26, the AP reports, in order “to maximize hardcover sales over the holidays” according to spokesperson Tina Andreadis.AP
Over 2 Million Units for Dan Brown, and More Numbers from Publishing's Big Week
Yesterday Random House announced sales of “more than two million” units of Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL in all editions (including audio and ebook) throughout the world in the first week on sale, through Monday. They call it “the biggest one-week sale in Random House history for a single title.” Per yesterday’s Lunch, Nielsen BookScan UK reports through The Bookseller that over a quarter of those units–at least 551,000 copies–were sold in the UK. Doubleday’s Suzanne Herz indicated to the AP that “around 5 percent, or 100,000 copies” were sold as ebooks, and the WSJ confirms that sales within the […]
Amazon Says That, Excluding Pre-Orders, Lost Symbol Sold More Kindle Units on Day One than Print Books
Calling it “the big surprise” (if they do say so themselves)–and pretty much confirming the importance of those pre-publication deliberations on issuing a simultaneous ebook edition–Amazon makes this report by e-mail to the WSJ. Of course the pre-orders were significant, so that exclusion is a big one. Also, Doubleday clarified yesterday afternoon that they sold over 1 million units–print and electronic–in the book’s first day on sale. Separately, while Twelve declined to quantify opening results for Ted Kennedy’s TRUE COMPASS, spokesman Cary Goldstein says “our opening day reports have unquestionably exceeded expectations.”
Record Breakers: Lost Symbols Moves More than 1 Million Copies and Doubleday Goes Back to Press
By late afternoon yesterday Barnes & Noble was ready to exult that Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL had set a new one-day sales record for adult fiction at the chain (without specifying which book held the previous record, or quantifying the new record). It also set a new mark for adult fiction pre-orders and perhaps most importantly, “the company said that sales for the book were exceeding expectations.”Release In the UK, Waterstone’s fiction buyer Simon Burke reported similarly unquantified but record-breaking results to The Bookseller: “We have seen phenomenal sales for the new Dan Brown. The Lost Symbol is Waterstone’s […]
Brown Thanks Maslin
At a launch party in New York last night for THE LOST SYMBOL, Dan Brown was lavish in his thanks to all the departments at Knopf Doubleday and throughout Random House that engineered the 5-million-copy laydown of the new book. (“Let’s hope we never see them again,” he quipped.) As he noted at the beginning of his remarks, “I realize technically we’ve only published one book together–so far, so good.” For anyone who thought the publisher might be miffed by the New York Times’ early review of the new book, Brown added to his thank-you list “a woman I’ve never […]