This Week's Bestsellers: February 9, 2015

Making Her Presence Known

Gayle Forman's I Was Here debuts on our Children's Frontlist Fiction list this week at #4, with 6,868 units sold at outlets reporting to Nielsen BookScan. She has written several well-received YA novels; her first, If I Stay, was adapted into a film release last summer. That book and its companion, Where She Went, have, together, sold more than 2.2 million copies in various print formats, according to BookScan. I Was Here is Forman's first novel since the movie release, and it's generating her strongest first-week sales to date.

Second 'Season'

The Mime Order, at #18 on our Hardcover Fiction list, returns readers to the world of Samantha Shannon's 2013 urban fantasy, The Bone Season. The first book was one of that year's most highly anticipated debuts, with Bloomsbury preempting world English rights in a three-book deal, and Shannon was touted as the next J.K. Rowling in advance of its release. For PW's Facts & Figures 2013, Bloomsbury reported sales of more than 150K in hardcover for The Bone Season; BookScan numbers fall well short of this, showing 34,432 units sold. BookScan also shows a first-week drop-off from first book to second.

An Unexpected Hit

South Dakota Historical Society Press can’t print enough copies of Pioneer Girl, the annotated edition of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1930 autobiography, edited by Pamela Smith Hill. After considerable prepub buzz—including PW’s story on the book’s long road to publication and an AP article on the differences between the Little House on the Prairie TV series and the darker reality of Wilder’s life—the initial print run of 5,000 was upped to 15,000. Three months later, Pioneer Girl is in its third print run—of 45,000 copies—so that a total of 75,000 copies will be in print by late February. Pioneer Girl debuts on our Hardcover Nonfiction list this week with 8,316 units sold, according to BookScan; the book has sold 17, 090 copies since its release.

Top 10 Overall