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A Ship-Shape Windfall, Part 1
Daisy Maryles, with Dick Donahue -- 2/9/98
By tomorrow we will know if the movie Titanic has broken the record for most number of Oscar nominations -- 14, set in 1952 by All About Eve. Titanic, which in its seventh week did more business than in its sixth and is still #1 at the box office, has been good for so many other industries -- even including the cruise business!It has surpassed Independence Day to become the seventh-highest grossing film ever, and industry pundits are guessing that Titanic could become the first movie in history to gross $1 billion in worldwide box office receipts. The movie's soundtrack, with sales of more than 1.6 million copies in the U.S. alone, is the #1 album in 10 countries.
Certainly the biggest beneficiary of this megamovie is the book business. No single film has ever inspired sales for so many books from so many publishers. In addition to the two that have actually made PW's weekly charts -- Bantam's A Night to Remember by Walter Lord, first published in 1958 and now up to 2,777,000 copies in print after 71 printings, and James Cameron's 'Titanic' (HarperCollins, 250,000 copies in print after 10 trips to press) -- at least another two dozen books from about 15 publishers are enjoying a Titanic sales surge. (And that d sn't include the many Leonardo DiCaprio photobooks being marketed to the YA crowd.)

Here are some more facts and figures about a handful of these books; look for more in next week's column.

Avon has been doing very well with Her Name, Titanic by Charles Pellegrino -- the book's reputation as one of the tomes used for research by director James Cameron has certainly buoyed sales. In fact, Pellegrino was invited to view a rough cut of the film so Cameron could get his reaction as a scientist and one of the foremost Titanic experts. First published in 1988, the mass market is approaching 300,000 copies in print after 14 printings.

Going on sale this week from Avon is Walter Lord's The Night Lives On, which investigates some of the great riddles surrounding the disaster. First printing for the book (originally published by Morrow in 1986) is 300,000.

Percolating right below the top 15 nonfiction hardcover titles is Titanic: Legacy of the World's Greatest Ocean Liner by Susan Wels. Time-Life sold through its 65,000-copy first printing immediately after the film's December 19 release and immediately ordered 45,000 more. A six-city tour with spokesperson George Tulloch, who wrote the epilogue and is the president of RMS. Titanic Inc. (the official guardians of the ship's wreck site who have recovered more than 5000 artifacts), received lots of media attention. The result: a third and fourth printing of 30,000 and 35,000, for a total of 175,000 books.

One of the more curious Titanic titles, The Titanic Story: Ocean's Greatest Disaster is a special facsimile edition of a book first published in May 1912 (d s that qualify it for first instant book in the U.S.?), culled from newspaper accounts of eyewitness stories and sold door-to-door. London-based publisher Martin Breese purchased this "instant disaster book" at a fair in 1997 and published it last month; distribution in the U.S. is through Firebird Distributing in Eureka, Calif. To date, copies in print are about 3000.

Yet another curious title comes from Hyperion: Last Dinner on the Titanic: Menus and Recipes from the Great Liner by Rick Archbold and Dana McCauley, with a foreword by Walter Lord; copies in print exceed 70,000. The authors have hosted several dinners re-creating meals served on the ship for restaurants and hotels nationwide.

Not quite a book is Titanic: The Official Story, April 14-15, 1912, from Random House, a collection of primary sources-reproduced documents including more than 100 pages of correspondence, government certificates and official papers from London's Public Record Office -- all attractively contained in a box. Copies in print total 52,500.
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