Bestsellers

Behind the Bestsellers
Daisy Maryles -- 12/11/00

An Indy Favorite | Paperback Winners
This Old House | From Paris to the List | Nonfiction Runners-Up


An Indy FavoriteSusan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue is doing very well at independent bookstores nationwide and, as a result, is climbing regional bestseller charts (it's #1 on the San Francisco Chronicle list this week). So far, it has not made the weekly lists at any of the national chains. The author has completed a 30-city tour promoting the paperback edition. Girl was a PW Best Book of 1999 and a finalist for the Book Sense Book of the Year Award. The Penguin trade paperback, published in October, has 125,000 copies in print after three trips to press. Hallmark Hall of Fame made an outright mid-six-figures purchase for a TV movie; the deal (Hot Deals, Nov. 13) was arranged by J l Gotler at AMG/ Renaissance on behalf of Vreeland's literary agent, Barbara Braun.


Paperback WinnersTwo new mass market reprints of hardcover bestsellers land on this week's charts. In the #2 slot is False Memory by Dean Koontz. Bantam reports nearly 1.7 million copies in print for the new bestseller. In its hardcover edition, published earlier this year, the book landed in the #1 spot the first week out and had a nine-week run on the charts. Fans can look forward to another Koontz before the end of the year--Bantam will publish From the Corner of His Eye on December 26 with a 500,000 first printing. Barbara Taylor Bradford's Where You Belong lands in the #9 place. Earlier this year, the hardcover was on our list for three weeks. Bradford boasts 59 million copies of her books in print and, since 1979, has had 15 consecutive national bestsellers.


This Old House
What is the oldest official residence of a head of state anywhere in the world? You guessed it: the White House, which marks its 200th anniversary this year. On November 29, Simon & Schuster published An Invitation to the White House: At Home with History by Hillary Rodham Clinton. It lands on the national charts with 125,000 copies

in print after two trips to press. All author proceeds have been assigned to the White House Historical Association, and a portion of S&S's profits will be donated to the National Parks Foundation. To promote the book, the First Lady was interviewed at the White House by all three network morning TV programs and she appeared on Rosie O'Donnell's show.


From Paris to the List

Armchair travel
favorites.
"Adam Gopnik's Paris to the Moon was on our nonfiction list for a week early in November and is back again this week. In the interim, it was always one of the five runners-up on PW's chart. Random House had 75,000 copies in print after four trips to press in early November; currently the print figure is up to 125,000 copies after six trips to press. Random guesses that the book is back on the list because "everyone is tired of the election nonsense and is wanting to move to France." The publisher also offered a more plausible scenario: booksellers have been doing some serious handselling (see Bookselling, 12/11/2000). Gopnik's book chronicles his five-year sojourn, from 1995 to 2000, in Paris with his wife and young son. He told RH publicist Kimberly Burns that he took his son to their neighborhood Barnes & Noble to show him the book, but the store had sold 34 copies in one day and was out of stock. Five-year-old Luke told his dad not to be disappointed, pointing out, "They have lots of books to worry about, Daddy." Perhaps, but Gopnik's was not one of them.

Nonfiction Runners-UpFive hardcover books right under the top 15 nonfiction are enjoying strong sales. They are The Darwin Awards by Wendy Northcutt (Dutton; first printing, 50,000, current total is 153,000); The Sibley Guide to Birds,written and illustrated by David Allen Sibley (Knopf; first printing, 125,000, current total is 301,000); A Charlie Brown Christmas by Charles M. Schulz (HarperCollins; it's the story behind the perennial holiday show that has aired on CBS-TV for 35 consecutive years); In Tuscany by Frances Mayes (Broadway Books; 275,000 copies in print); and The Last Amateurs by John Feinstein (Little, Brown; 153,000 copies in print).