The Oscar Effect

It may be an honor just to be nominated, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into book sales come awards time. At the 2015 Oscars, page-to-screen adaptations were well represented among nominees, but only Still Alice took home a Big Five award, for best actress Julianne Moore.* Here’s a look at how trade paper movie tie-ins did in the week following the ceremony, compared to the prior week.

Still Alice UP 46% from 8,655 units to 12,620 units
Alan Turing: The Enigma UP 17% from 2,272 to 2,664
Wild UP 6% from 7,779 to 8,219
Gone Girl DOWN 9% from 5,440 to 4,929
American Sniper DOWN 11% from 53,465 to 47,431
Unbroken DOWN 11% from 11,615 to 10,312

*Birdman, whose plot centers on a stage production based on Raymond Carver’s story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” nabbed Best Picture, as well as garnering the directing Oscar for Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Vintage’s trade paper edition of the Carver collection of the same name is up 70%, from 306 to 521 print units.

Banding Together

Girl in a Band, a memoir by Sonic Youth founding member Kim Gordon, lands on our Hardcover Nonfiction list this week at #6, with 6,373 print units sold. The rock memoir is an autobiographical staple, though, just as men often crowd center stage, the majority of high-profile reminiscences are written by rock gods rather than goddesses. Here, we look debut weeks for books by Gordon and a few of her sisters in song.

The Art of the Bestseller

Making its debut on our Trade Paperback list is The Art of Having It All, by Christy Whitman, at #13 with 7,913 units sold. Whitman’s publisher, TVGuestpert, is a media development company founded by TV producer, show runner, and talent booker Jacquie Jordan. Whitman’s book has already sold out on Amazon, so Jordan seems to have succeeded at her goal as laid out on the TVGuestpert website: “raising the profile of each guest expert and thereby growing the business and brand of each client.”

1 American Sniper (movie tie-in) Chris Kyle Morrow 47,431
2 Green Eggs and Ham Dr. Seuss Random 45,080
3 The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins Riverhead 42,169
4 One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish Dr. Seuss Random 39,370
5 The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss Random 33,331
6 One Wish Robyn Carr Mira 33,059
7 Prodigal Son Danielle Steel Delacorte 28,423
8 The Target David Baldacci Vision 24,776
9 Fox in Socks Dr. Seuss Random 23,080
10 Dr. Seuss’s ABC Dr. Seuss Random 22,897