Bestseller Stat Shot
Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, debuted atop our Hardcover Fiction list last week and held on to the #2 spot this week. His previous novel, 1Q84, debuted at #3 on our Hardcover Fiction list when it published in October 2011. (Its competition was rough: John Grisham’s The Litigators published at the same time, and Nicholas Sparks’s The Best of Me was also on a new-release roll.) Despite the author’s certified rock-star status in Japan, and now in America as well, a new Murakami novel wasn’t always so momentous a commercial occasion. Indeed, before 1Q84, his out-of-the-gate sales were stellar by literary standards, but far from blockbuster level. Here’s first-week sales of Murakami’s four most-recent novels at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan.
| Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage | August 2014 | 21,498 |
| IQ84 | October 2011 | 30,537 |
| After Dark | May 2007 | 4,936 |
| Kafka on the Shore | January 2005 | 3,613 |
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Advanced marketing tips for indie authors.
Blogs
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The most-read review on publishersweekly.com last week was White Bird in a Blizzard by Laura Kasischke (Hyperion).
Podcasts
The More to Come crew discuss the controversy surrounding the erotic cover image on the inaugural issue of Spider Woman, and much more.
Author Kara Braden discusses her debut novel, The Longest Night (Sourcebooks). Plus, PW senior reviews editor Peter Cannon previews some upcoming thrillers.
