Heavy Medal
The 2016 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced April 18, and in a not-unfamiliar phenomenon, each lauded book enjoyed a bump in sales the week after the announcement. Here’s a look at the week-over-week percentage gains for the winning titles.
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Fiction
4,532%
Custer’s Trials
T.J. Stiles
History
514%
Barbarian Days
William Finnegan
Biography
327%
Ozone Journal
Peter Balakian
Poetry
7,975%
Black Flags
Joby Warrick
General Nonfiction
662%
(See all of this week's bestselling books.)
Terminal’s Velocity
Marine Corps veteran Maximilian Uriarte launched the webcomic Terminal Lance in 2010, amassing a following that caught the attention of Marine Corps Times, which began running it weekly. At about the same time he created Terminal Lance, Uriarte began work on a related graphic novel, The White Donkey. He launched a Kickstarter for the book in July 2013, and within 13 hours he reached his $20,000 goal. One month and several stretch goals later, he had $162,681 from 2,959 backers.
On top of the copies Uriarte printed for people who backed the project, he printed 3,000 more and put those on Amazon in February this year; those sold out in 36 hours. Little, Brown picked up The White Donkey, and this week it debuts on our Hardcover Fiction list at #20. Listen to our interview with Uriarte.
Drinking Up the Attention
At #12 on our Trade Paperback list, Milk and Honey is a debut collection of poetry and prose by Rupi Kaur, a Canadian spoken-word performer with an Instagram reach 422K followers strong. She originally self-published the book in 2014 (it sold 10K print copies), then Andrews McMeel picked it up, and released a new edition in October 2015. The book debuted on our list April 4 and has claimed a spot there since. To date, it’s sold almost 80K print copies.
Watch this space, because poetry is having a moment: award-winning British poet Warsan Shire is blowing up this week thanks to her credit on Beyoncé’s surprise “visual album,” Lemonade. According to the New York Times, Shire’s publisher, Flipped Eye, plans to release her first full-length collection, Extreme Girlhood, in the next year or so and is in talks with U.S. publishers to bring the volume here.
New & Notable
Eligible
Curtis Sittenfeld
#6 Hardcover Fiction
The fifth novel from the author of Prep and American Wife is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, featuring characters including Liz Bennet, a magazine writer in her late 30s, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, a neurosurgeon.
Maestra
L.S. Hilton
#17 Hardcover Fiction
We asked Hilton, in a February 15 interview, for a spoiler-free plot description of her psychological thriller, which launches a trilogy Putnam acquired for seven figures. The author replied: “Sex, murder, shoes.”
My Struggle, Book Five
Karl Ove Knausgaard
#22 Hardcover Fiction
In the penultimate volume of the Norwegian author’s autobiographical novel series, Karl Ove loses his father and completes his first novel.
Top 10 Overall
| Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Last Mile | David Baldacci | Grand Central | 57,267 |
| 2 | The Obsession | Nora Roberts | Berkley | 24,204 |
| 3 | The Melody Lingers On | Mary Higgins Clark | S&S/Pocket | 21,367 |
| 4 | Make Me | Lee Child | Dell | 18,940 |
| 5 | Oh, the Places You’ll Go! | Dr. Seuss | Random House | 18,653 |
| 6 | Me Before You | Jojo Moyes | Penguin | 16,490 |
| 7 | The Rainbow Comes and Goes | Cooper/Vanderbilt | Harper | 15,299 |
| 8 | One with You | Sylvia Day | St. Martin’s Griffin | 14,868 |
| 9 | The Murder House | Patterson/Ellis | Grand Central | 13,869 |
| 10 | Gathering Prey | John Sandford | Putnam | 12,601 |
All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.
