Bestseller Stat Shot: Board Books
While most print formats are seeing a year-over-year sales drop-off in 2013, board books aren’t just up—they’re way up: 12%. (See the Weekly Scorecard on p. 5 for how other formats are faring.) A quick scan of this week’s top-selling board books shows that three of the top 10 have been on the list since 2004, with many more further down the list notching runs well beyond the 100-week mark. The format is also seasonally driven. Right now, there’s a barrage of Halloween books and enough pumpkin-themed reading to stock a farm stand. Here are the top 10 board books this week.
| Room on the Broom | Donaldson/Scheffler | Dial | 12,189 |
| Five Little Pumpkins | Dan Yaccarino | HarperFestival | 8,331 |
| Goodnight Moon | Brown/Hurd | HarperFestival | 7,479 |
| Where Is Baby’s Pumpkin? | Karen Katz | Little Simon | 7,334 |
| Halloween Jack | Jo Rigg | Priddy Books | 6,133 |
| Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? | Martin/Carle | Henry Holt | 6,097 |
| Haunted Clubhouse | Marcy Kelman | Disney | 5,813 |
| Biscuit’s Pet & Play Halloween | Capucilli/Schories | HarperFestival | 5,666 |
| Five Little Pumpkins | Ben Mantle | Tiger Tales | 5,605 |
| The Very Hungry Caterpillar | Eric Carle | Philomel | 5,599 |
We talk with Carla Kaplan about her book Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance (Harper), plus PW audio reviews editor Adam Boretz tells us about some of the hot new audiobook releases.
Blogs
PWxyz
With less than a week until we unveil our Best Books of 2013, PW’s editors are blogging about some of their favorite books of the year.
ShelfTalker
What happens when 20 five-year-olds descend on a bookstore at the same time?
Beyond Her Book
Barbara checks one off the bucket list: visiting Scotland.
Podcasts
KidsCast
Author Daniel Beaty and illustrator Bryan
Collier talk about their collaboration on Knock Knock: My Dad’s Dream for Me
(L,B Books for Young Readers).
The Week Ahead
How much can consumers expect to get back as a result of the e-book price-fixing case? One figure pegs the damages at $308 million.
Subscribe to our podcasts in iTunes, or listen here.
Authors
Cabbage—the unsung hero of the vegetable world—as explained by Jennie Cook, author of Who Wants Seconds? (Prospect Park).
An Air Force major goes on a mission to rescue another officer secretly imprisoned in China in James R. Hannibal’s Shadow Catcher (Berkley). We talk with him about PTSD, his past as a stealth pilot, and the politics of the Chinese military.
PW reviews editor Rose Fox and editors Tony Daniel of Baen and Sara Peed of Del Rey talk urban fantasy, in a free webcast on
Nov. 1 at 1 p.m. Register now!
From the Newsletters
Tip Sheet
The top 10 story collections, picked by Carolyn Cooke, whose brilliant Amor and Psycho (Knopf) hits this week.
Children’s Bookshelf
A YA author loses a wager and has to change his social media photo to a Justin Bieber publicity shot. Confusion ensues.
Sign up for all newsletters here.
The most-read review on publishersweekly.com last week was The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson (Viking).
