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Clancy's Latest Victory
-- 8/17/98
There was never much doubt about Tom Clancy's latest, Rainbow Six, landing in the #1 slot; in fact, it outsold the #2 bestseller by about seven to 1. And since Clancy is one of only two authors who can command a two million-copy first printing -- the other, of course, is John Grisham -- the next thing to establish is who can garner the highest first-week unit sales. Clancy outscores Grisham here by a bit; first-week receipts for Rainbow Six are about 10% ahead of those for Grisham's latest, The Street Lawyer. Clancy's book, his first to be widely sold online, is the leading seller at the two major Internet booksellers -- Amazon.com and B&N.com. At the national chains, first-week sales for his previous book, Executive Orders, published two years ago, were ahead of Rainbow Six. In 1996, the total number of copies of Executive Orders sold at B&N, Waldenbooks and a half-dozen sizable independents came to about 90,000 (with almost 89,000 from the two national chains). In 1998, unit sales for Rainbox Six from the same eight places total almost 81,000 (with a little over 80,000 from the two chains). Clancy's August 5 signing at his official lucky bookstore, Booksmith in New London, Conn., was a huge success -- people began to queue up at 7 a.m. for the star's scheduled appearance at noon. Clancy arrived one hour early and signed a tad over 1100 copies of Rainbow Six in three and a half hours. Owner Richard Swanson noted that in the book's first nine days on sale, he moved about 1350 units. Still, Clancy's record of 1400 copies signed for Executive Orders stands.

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