This Week's Bestsellers: August 15, 2016

Do You Believe in Magic?

Turns out Hamlet was right: this week, at least, the play’s the thing. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Part 1 and 2, the script for the sold-out West End stage production, sold 2.55 million print units, making it the #1 book in the country this week by far. How far? It sold more than twice as many print copies as the next 99 books sold together.

As we noted last week, prerelease anticipation fueled sales for the first seven novels in the series, and the trend continues. Print unit sales of the 1999 paperback edition of the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, are up 58% over last week; it’s the #10 book in the country overall. Over in Children’s Frontlist Fiction, the 2015 illustrated edition of that book, with art by Jim Kay, is up 117% over last week, checking in at #2.

(See all of this week's bestselling books.)

Tracking Sales

Colson Whitehead’s new novel, The Underground Railroad, debuts at #3 on our Hardcover Fiction list. It was originally scheduled for a September 13 release, but Doubleday moved up the publication to August 2, to coincide with Oprah Winfrey tapping it as her latest book club pick. The novel had already been generating good prepublication buzz, but it’s likely the Oprah nod didn’t hurt, either.

First-Week Print Unit Sales: Colson Whitehead’s Most Recent Novels

Election Countdown

Radio host Glenn Beck isn’t known for mincing words, and the subtitle of his new book, Liars, is no exception: How Progressives Exploit Our Fears for Power and Control. It debuts this week at #8 in the country overall and tops our Hardcover Nonfiction list. Elsewhere in nonfiction, The Making of Donald Trump by David Cay Johnston, at #19, is based three decades of the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter’s work. One notch below, Whistlestop by John Dickerson takes the long view: in it, the Face the Nation moderator and Slate columnist goes beyond the six presidential cycles he’s covered to look at elections dating to the earliest days of the United States.

Over on our Trade Paperback list, Yuge! 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump by Garry Trudeau, is at #24. It pubbed July 5, but this is its debut week on our list; the anthology’s print unit sales are up 94% over last week, representing its best week yet.

New & Notable

Bullseye

James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

#1 Hardcover Fiction, #3 overall

The new Michael Bennett thriller joins two others on our list: Alert, which is at #7 in its second week on our mass market, and Chase, a BookShots story that debuts on our Trade Paperback list this week at #6.

Sweet Tomorrows

Debbie Macomber

#2 Hardcover Fiction, #6 overall

The fifth and final novel in Macomber’s Rose Harbor series sold 5,000 more print copies in its first week than the previous book did. That title, Silver Linings, has been on our Mass Market list since it pubbed five weeks ago and is at #11 this week.

Top 10 Overall

All unit sales per Nielsen BookScan except where noted.