Bestseller Stat Shot
The four bestselling books in the country this week are mass market paperbacks, and each got a huge boost from the mass merchandisers channel—which includes stores like Walmart and Costco. As it turns out, the format is hugely popular in the channel, where 19 of the 20 top-selling titles are mass market paperbacks. Here are the top 10, with the percentage of their total unit sales for the week that came from mass merchandisers.
| The Hero | Robyn Carr | $7.99 | 79% |
| The Racketeer | John Grisham | $9.99 | 71% |
| Big Sky Wedding | Linda Lael Miller | $10.00 | 82% |
| The Forgotten | David Baldacci | $10.00 | 52% |
| Webster’s New World Dictionary | Michael Agnes, ed. | $5.50 | 99% |
| Univ. of Chicago Spa.-Eng. Dictionary | Pharies/Moynd, eds. | $5.99 | 98% |
| The Inn at Rose Harbor | Debbie Macomber | $7.99 | 68% |
| Diamond in the Rough | Diana Palmer | $6.99 | 88% |
| Temptation | Sherryl Woods | $7.99 | 79% |
| Low Pressure | Sandra Brown | $8.00 | 77% |
From the Newsletters
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Children’s Bookshelf
Jim Carrey: actor, comedian, and now author. We check in with him about his first picture book, How Roland Rolls (Some Kind of Garden Media), which publishes later this month.
PW Select Report
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The most-read review on publishersweekly.com last week was Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin Press).
Blogs
ShelfTalker
“I hate circus books set during the Depression,” and other bookstore customers’ bookish pet peeves.
PWxyz
How an oral history of oral histories might read.
Beyond Her Book
In the latest look at what romance authors are reading, Marilyn Baron recommends Daniel Silva’s The English Girl (Harper), and more.
Podcasts
More to Come
It’s a busy week on our comics podcast: the More to Come crew talk about Viz Media’s price hike for digital manga and Marvel’s new digital subscription service. Plus an interview with Tim Leong, author of Super Graphic (Chronicle).
The Week Ahead
PW senior writer Andrew Albanese on the Apple price-fixing endgame, and what the outlook is for the Authors Guild–Google suit, recently revived after a yearlong stay.
Subscribe to our podcasts in iTunes, or listen here.
Authors
Swedish author Anna Jansson talks about her novel Strange Bird (Stockholm Text), about a pandemic flu—her first book to be translated into English.
Catch a video of Gene Luen Yang, whose brilliant pair of graphic novels—Boxers and Saints (Roaring Brook/First Second)—publishes this week, talking about his inspiration for the books and what contemporary comics geeks have in common with the Boxers.
Jamie Moyer, the oldest pitcher in the majors to win a game last season, talks about Just Tell Me I Can’t (Grand Central), his inspiring biography, written with Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Larry Platt.
Webcasts
For the Love of Romance
Join Barbara Vey and editors from Harlequin, Sourcebooks, and Kensington on September 17 for a lively webcast about romance novels, what makes a great heroine, how the rise of erotica is making itself felt in the romance category, and more.
Discussion Series: The New Publishing Jobs Market and 2013 Salary Survey
Are you earning what you should be? Join us as PW co-editorial director Jim Milliot analyzes the results of our annual salary survey at the next PW discussion panel, on September 25. Register at
PW Radio
Lori Duron discusses her new book, Raising My Rainbow (Crown/Broadway), about being the parent of a son who prefers Barbies to trucks and princesses to pirates. Plus, PW co-editorial director Jim Milliot talks about the latest earnings reports from the big-six publishers. Listen here.
