MAKING LIST WITH PULITZER
Michael Cunningham is having an extraordinary year -- he's won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature and the Pen/Faulkner Award for fiction, as well as the American Library Association's Gay, Lesbian &Bisexual Award for Fiction. And now his prize-winning The Hours is also making it onto all the national bestseller charts. His publisher, Farrar, Straus &Giroux, reports that it has gone back to print twice, for 50,000 and 25,000 copies, respectively, bringing the in-print total to more than 115,000.
BREAK OUT THE SAKE
Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha has hit another milestone -- one million copies in print in its Vintage edition after 15 trips to press. The trade paperback was first published in mid-January with a 300,000-copy first printing. It has become Vintage's fastest-selling non-Oprah Book Club title ever (the house boasts seven Oprah picks). Columbia Pictures is already working on marketing plans for the Steven Spielberg-directed movie and its Web site (www.memoirsofageisha.com), which will launch in the next few weeks to co-promote the movie and the book.
WHAT MAKES BOYS TICK?
A new entry on PW's trade paperback list is Dr. William Pollack's Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood. Holt published the book this month; it already boasts 250,000 copies in print. The author, co-director of the Center for Men at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical Center, has appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, 20/20 and NPR's Fresh Air, among others, to talk about his research at over two decades, exploring why so many boys, though they may appear to be tough, cheerful and confident, are actually sad, lonely and confused. Sales began to accelerate after Dr. Pollack did a full hour on Oprah on April 5. On April 21, after the dreadful events at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., Oprah did a rare live program and Dr. Pollack appeared via satellite to talk about the situation. Oprah plans to re-broadcast her one-hour show with Dr. Pollack next week. He begins his 10-city tour in Denver on April 26. His tour schedule includes speeches to PTA conferences, Mothers Against Violence in America and the School Principals Association.
MILITARY MOVEMENTS
It seems that books on warfare are seizing the public's attention of late. Two weeks ago we wrote about Black Hawk Down (it hit our list this week in the #15 spot). This week Fortunes of War continues to sell, although it fell off the list after two weeks on the mass market chart; it's now one of the five titles just below the top 15. This tale of conflict among Japan, Russia and the U.S. is the seventh action thriller by former naval aviator Stephen Coonts, whose books have an in-print total of 15 million copies worldwide. St. Martin's released the paperback (PW said, "full of action and suspense... a strong addition to the genre") earlier this month with a first printing of 750,000. As publicist Katie Taylor noted, "This [bestsellerdom for Fortunes of War] is great buzz for Coonts's upcoming summer blockbuster, Cuba." That SMP August release, which will be supported with a 250,000-copy first printing, a national author tour and a $325,000 marketing campaign, marks the return of popular Coonts hero Rear Admiral Jake Grafton.
Also, Stephen Hunter's Time to Hunt, from Dell Island, about the final years of the Vietnam War, g s onto our mass market list with a 450,000-copy first printing.
X-WINGS ONTO LIST
Book 7 in Bantam Spectra's bestselling X-Wing Star Wars series, Isard's Revenge by Michael A. Stackpole, makes it onto the charts with 286,000 copies in print. The publisher notes that its Star Wars series -- numbering more than 40 books -- has a total of about 26 million copies in print.
With reporting by Dick Donahue.