A Good Week for Day
This week’s #4 hardcover nonfiction title is You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost), a memoir by actress Felicia Day, who has starred on TV shows including Supernatural but is best known for her online following. Here, we take a by-the-numbers look at the author.
2008
Year she starred opposite Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion on Joss Whedon’s Web miniseries, Dr. Horrible
204K
# of subscribers to Day’s personal YouTube channel
8,483
Release-to-date print unit sales for The Guild, Vol. 1, a comic inspired by Day’s Web series of the same name (see last item).
1.27million
# of subscribers to Geek and Sundry, the YouTube
comedy channel Day launched in 2012 and sold in 2014; she continues to write, produce, and perform for it
10,361
This week’s print unit sales for You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)
342K
# of subscribers to the Day’s 2007–2013 web series, The Guild
(See all of this week's bestselling books.)
At the Movies
The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson’s 2003 account of the 1893 World’s Fair and the serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims, is up 126% this week, with 5,604 paperback units sold. Why the bump? On August 10, Paramount won rights at auction to a film package that has Leonardo DiCaprio attached to star, and Martin Scorsese to direct.
Hollywood magic touched another backlist title this week: the trade paper edition of David Foster Wallace’s 1996 post-postmodern doorstop of a novel, Infinite Jest sold 4,528 print units, up 81% over last week. This week last year, it sold 468 print units. Sales have been building incrementally since just before the July 31 release of The End of the Tour, the film adaptation of David Lipsky’s Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. In the 2010 volume, Lipsky recounts the five days he spent with Wallace on the author’s book tour for Infinite Jest, with transcripts and commentary.
Notable Debuts
Who Do You Love
by Jennifer Weiner
#5 Hardcover Fiction
9,793 print units
Weiner’s new novel is a love story inspired in part by her personal life and a relationship that picked up years after it had gone fallow. Print sales for the author, a frequent champion of other women writers, top 5 million units.
Cook’s Country Eats Local: 150 Regional Recipes You Should Be Making No Matter Where You Live
#3 Trade Paperback
13,303 print units
Regional cooking is hot: just ask America’s Test Kitchen. For more cookbooks that focus on local favorites across the U.S. and around the globe, check out our fall cookbooks feature at publishersweekly.com/fall15cookbooks.
Top 10 Overall
Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | Units |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Go Set a Watchman | Harper Lee | Harper | 59,814 |
2 | What Pet Should I Get? | Dr. Seuss | Random | 36,982 |
3 | Grey | E.L. James | Vintage | 36,360 |
4 | Plunder and Deceit | Mark R. Levin | S&S/Threshold | 29,848 |
5 | Mean Streak | Sandra Brown | Grand Central | 26,762 |
6 | The Girl on the Train | Paula Hawkins | Riverhead | 26,303 |
7 | The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up | Marie Kondo | Ten Speed | 25,971 |
8 | Alert | Patterson/Ledwidge | Little, Brown | 24,930 |
9 | Secret Garden | Johanna Basford | Laurence King | 23,679 |
10 | Paper Towns | John Green | Speak | 23,465 |