New Jewel in Oprah’s Book Club Crown
On Feb. 10, Ruby, by Cynthia Bond, was named the newest pick for Oprah Book Club 2.0. It lands on PW’s Trade Paperback list at #16 and in one week has outsold total hardcover sales to date. Here’s a look at how all four Oprah Book Club 2.0 picks have fared, according to BookScan.
Ruby
Pub. date: Feb. 2015
Picked: Feb. 2014
Oprah 2.0 effect: Originally released in April 2014, Cynthia Bond’s debut saw modest hardcover sales, totalling 3,424 to date. The paperback, released the same day as the Oprah endorsement, sold 5,750 units in its first week on sale.
The Invention of Wings
Pub. date: Jan. 2014
Picked: Dec. 2013
Oprah 2.0 effect: Sue Monk Kidd was already well-known for The Secret Life of Bees, and Viking stuck to the January 2014 pub date. Wings sold 33,067 units in its first week.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
Pub. date: Oct. 2013
Picked: Dec. 2012
Oprah 2.0 effect: Ayana Mathis’s debut novel was originally scheduled to pub in January 2013 but Knopf rushed a December release after the book club announcement. It sold 4,702 books that first week, 18,180 the second.
Wild
Pub. date: March 2012
Picked: June 2012
Oprah 2.0 effect: Unit sales jumped 220% the week after the announcement, from 3,541 to 11,319, which at the time was the best week to date for Cheryl Strayed’s blockbuster-to-be.
People Skills
Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens offers a look at how humans came to dominate the planet, and where we may be heading as a species. With it, Harari, a history lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, lands on PW’s Hardcover Nonfiction list this week. Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the author and his book.
| 16 | debut position on PW’s Hardcover Nonfiction list |
| 16 | number of territories that the book has been published in |
| 3.7K | first-week U.S. print sales per BookScan |
| 300K | worldwide hardcover and e-book sales to date, per Harper |
| 130K | number of students who have taken Harari’s massive open online course, A Brief History of Humankind, according to Coursera |
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that Sapiens has been sold in 16 territories. It has been published in 16 territories.
The X-Factor
Holy Cow, the first novel by David Duchovny, is at #22 on PW’s Hardcover Fiction list with 2,656 units sold this week according to BookScan. He’s hardly the only celebrity to try his hand at fiction recently—other debutantes of late include Gillian Anderson, Duchovny’s X-Files costar.
| 1st Week Unit Sales | |
|---|---|
| A Vision of Fire by Gillian Anderson (Oct. 2014) | 805 |
| One More Thing by B.J. Novak (Feb. 2014) | 5,806 |
| When It Happens to You by Molly Ringwald (Aug. 2012) | 703 |
| Palo Alto by James Franco (Oct. 2010) | 1,633 |
Top 10 Overall
| Rank | Title | Author | Imprint | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | American Sniper (trade paper movie tie-in) | Chris Kyle | Morrow | 75,275 |
| 2 | The Girl on the Train | Paula Hawkins | Riverhead | 56,491 |
| 3 | Green Eggs and Ham | Dr. Seuss | Random | 41,026 |
| 4 | One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish | Dr. Seuss | Random | 36,023 |
| 5 | Obsession in Death | J.D. Robb | Putnam | 31,698 |
| 6 | Fifty Shades of Grey (movie tie-in) | E.L. James | Vintage | 29,272 |
| 7 | The Food Babe Way | Vani Hari | Little, Brown | 27,025 |
| 8 | The Cat in the Hat | Dr. Seuss | Random | 26,970 |
| 9 | Fifty Shades of Grey | E.L. James | Vintage | 26,931 |
| 10 | American Sniper (mass market movie tie-in) | Chris Kyle | Harper | 25,403 |
