Michael Crichton's first HarperCollins megaseller, Prey, is his 13th international fiction bestseller, and the publisher launched the book in a one-day laydown on November 25 with a first printing of 1,580,000 copies. His books regularly make it to the big screen and his 1999 Timeline will be released in Spring 2003; the film version of Prey is now in development at Twentieth Century-Fox. The author is finishing a seven-city tour that includes stops at independents, national chain stores and big box stores such as Wal-Mart and Costco. Crichton's longest tenure on the hardcover charts in the last decade was with Timeline, for which he clocked 21 weeks; four of those in the #1 slot.