Amy Schumer’s essay collection, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, sold just under 40,000 hardcover copies, according to Nielsen BookScan (which covers about 80% of print sales). The showing was enough to make the book the #1 adult nonfiction title for the week ended August 21, 2016.
Released on August 16 by Simon & Schuster’s Gallery Books, Back Tattoo beat out The Constitution of the United States, the popular pamphlet-sized title, priced at just $1.50, that sold over 22,000 copies last week.
Gallery acquired the Schumer title for a reported as $8 million, and the book was expected to be one of the big titles of the summer. PW's starred review called the work an "entertaining an entertaining and eclectic collection of 30-plus essays."
The 40,000-copy sales total in its first week made Back Tattoo the third biggest seller overall last week. It trailed Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and the trade paperback edition of The Girl on the Train. Cursed Child, according to BookScan, moved 243,000 copies, while Girl on the Train moved 60,000 copies.
While no e-book sales figures are available for Schumer's book, it was #2 on the iBooks bestsellers list for last week
