Behind the Bestsellers
Daisy Maryles -- 1/3/00
Under the Tree
The end-of-the-year numbers were terrific, with lots of books selling in huge quantities and price seemed to be no barrier. In those intense weeks before Christmas, the books that were moving fastest had one of three words in the title -- Potter, Century and Chicken Soup. Okay, the last example is two words, but not only did the four titles that appear on PW's trade paper bestseller do well, but HCI's Chicken Soup stock was strong on the national charts. At Barnes & Noble, 10 of the top 30 trade paperbacks were from that series; at Waldenbooks, 15 of the top 30 trade bestsellers were soup-oriented, with Chicken Soup for a Mother's Soul in the lead position.
According to Health Communications, the 10 Chicken Soup titles sold more than 500,000 copies each in 1999; sales last year for all the books in the series came to about 10 million. The grand tally for all the Soup books is nearly 50 million. Another stat: the Chicken Soup for the Soul co-authors did more than 1000 radio interviews in 1999. HCI also reports that USA Today named Chicken Soup for the Golfer's Soul the #1 bestselling sports book of the year; Chicken Soup for the Kid's Soul won Nickelodeon's Kid's Choice award for Favorite Book of the Year (voted by Nickelodeon's viewers); and Chicken Soup for the Soul was noted as one of the top 10 bestselling books of the past five years.
Selling the Century
Life Our Century in Pictures, The Century and ESPN SportsCentury are among the season's big books. But there are also a number of books on the 20th century that would have made a list of top 30 nonfiction hardcovers. One of them, Century: One Hundred Years of Human Progress, Regression, Suffering and Hope, edited by London Sunday Times photo editor Bruce Bernard, from Phaidon Press, could be the heftiest tome on the last 100 years. According to the publisher, it has shipped more than one million pounds of the book (each copy weighs 13 pounds) -- that's more than 100,000 copies. The 1,120-page book features 1,000+ photographs, most never seen by the American public, and it comes with its own carrying case. While sales for the book have been strong in traditional book outlets, the book's early success came in the gift market and through some unusual retail channels -- it was a top seller at L.A.'s Sepulveda Car Wash and it also enjoyed sales at high-end clothing stores. The book has made it to the #8 spot on the L.A. Times' list. Barney's in New York City did a window display that included 120 boxed books. And the tome was also bought by lots of corporations as the holiday gift, including as A&M/Geffen Records and HBO.
The Source for Top Sellers
Sourcebooks has lots to celebrate. Its new book/CD combination, And the Crowd G s Wild, continues to be one of the hot holiday titles. Copies in print total 500,000 (first printing was 200,000; second was 300,000) and all but about 16,500 have been sold. Last year's holiday hit, We Interrupt This Broadcast, is among the top 20 nonfiction bestsellers. The publisher reports that it has 400,000 copies in print and is down to the last 50,000 copies. First printing, back in October '98, was 150,000; second and third printings of 50,000 each were ordered in December 1998 and January '99, and a fourth printing of 150,000 copies came in September 1999.
International Hits
What novels sold best worldwide in 1999? According to calculations in Publishing Trends (Market Partners' monthly newsletter), John Grisham's The Testament did well in 34 countries and had the highest index of 100. The index rankings were determined by awarding points for each time a book appeared in the newsletter listing of foreign bestseller charts; 10 points were given each time a book appeared at #1, down to one point for each time it appeared at #10. The nine other books were: Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune (HC, 14 languages); John Irving's A Widow for One Year (Ballantine, 23 countries); Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha (Knopf, 34 countries); Thomas Harris's Hannibal (Delacorte, 31 languages); Maeve Binchy's Tara Road (Delacorte, 11 languages); Marianne Fredriksson's Simon (Ballantine, 23 languages); Grisham's The Street Lawyer (DD, 34 languages); Hanna's Daughters by Fredriksson (Ballantine, 36 languages); and Wilbur Smith's Monsoon (St. Martin's, 15 countries).
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