Another Movie Tie-in Catches Fire

Topping the CoverCake chart in December for most talked-about book on social media was Suzanne Collins’s Catching Fire. The second book in the Hunger Games trilogy has benefitted mightily from the strong box-office numbers of the accompanying movie adaptation, which hit screens in late November. Catching Fire wasn’t the only movie tie-in to hit the list this month either, as a number of titles got a boost from their accompanying films.

New to the list, at #3, is Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor, which is the basis for the Mark Wahlberg starrer of the same name. The PW bestseller (the trade paperback is #4 on this week’s list) is based on true events and follows four Navy SEALs on a covert mission in Afghanistan that goes awry; it began gaining traction on social media when the marketing of the film, which opens on January 10, kicked into high gear in the second half of December. Jeff Costello, v-p of CoverCake, said, “Fans of Wahlberg’s and of Lutrell’s incredible book are highly anticipating this movie, as the [social media] comments on [it] were overwhelmingly positive.”

The two other new titles on the list are Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, at #6, and Ransom Riggs’s Hollow City, at #10. While it was no surprise to see Kidd’s book make the cut—it was selected as the Oprah Book Club 2.0 pick on December 10—Costello was taken aback by Hollow City’s inclusion.

The second book in Riggs’s Quirk-published Miss Peregrine series, Hollow City is hitting shelves on January 14. Riggs, whose first entry in the series was a surprise bestseller, has been drawing more attention recently; in late December the New York Times ran a piece about how the inspiration for the books was vintage photographs. The online chatter, Costello said, “steadily increased throughout the month” as fans of the series began discussing the book in the run-up to its forthcoming release.

CoverCake’s Top 10 Books in Social Media, December 2013