Five, Six, Pick Up Sales

It's a first for Janet Evanovich: reaching the coveted #1 spot--forHot Six--on the fiction hardcover list after just one week in the stores. In fact, it's the first time the author of the bestselling Stephanie Plum series has ever reached the lead spot. Her prior best performance was with the fifth book to star the sassy bounty hunter--High Five was on PW's hardcover list for four weeks, going as high as #9. That book is currently on our mass market list for the third week in a row and its sales figures, according to St. Martin's, are double what the numbers were for last year's paperback bestseller, Four to Score. Paperback copies in print of High Five total 500,000. Evanovich is in the midst of a 12-city national tour and her publisher is finishing up a five-week national radio ad campaign. First printing on the new hardcover was 150,000; the in-print total after three more trips to press is 205,000--quite a bit ahead of High Five's in-print total of 110,000. Promotion included a national print campaign and two different floor displays. But the author's most successful publicity and advertising has been on the Internet--Evanovich's Web site (www.evanovich.com) gets more than 800,000 hits a month. And if all that's not enough, her first Plum book, One for the Money, was recently purchased by TriStar Pictures for close to $1 million and is in preproduction.

A New Wrinkle on the Charts
It was only a few months ago, April 17 to be exact, that the folks at Rodale were popping champagne corks in celebration of the house's first national bestseller in its 60+ years on the publishing scene--Dr. Shapiro's Picture Perfect Weight Loss by Dr. Howard Shapiro, who practices weight-loss management on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The publisher launched the book April 3 with a 50,000-copy first printing and a mega-publicity campaign that included four segments on Good Morning America (Shapiro was back on GMA on June 28). Current copies in print total 170,000 after four printings. Now Rodale's new COO, Steve Murphy, can break out the bubbly for bestseller #2--The Wrinkle Cure by Dr. Nicholas Perricone. GMA again led the broadcast media pack, having already done two segments on the book (June 19 and June 23). The show put three staffers on Perricone's "nutritional facelift diet" for three days and then brought them back to examine the impressive results. Lifetime Live did the same with five women volunteers on June 26, with a follow-up segment on June 30. The Wrinkle Cure was published March 17 with a 41,000-copy first printing; that figure is up to 106,000 after three additional trips to press.

Celebrating a True Sportsman

"When his life came to a sudden and tragic end on October 25, 1999, Payne Stewart was at the top of his game on every level." Thus begins the jacket copy for Payne Stewart: The Authorized Biography, in which Tracey Stewart (writing with Ken Abraham) recounts the life and career of her late husband, one of the nation's leading golfers, who died in a private plane crash in South Dakota. He was 42 years old. The biography, which marks its fourth week on our non-fiction list, was released by Christian publishing house Broadman & Holman on June 1, to coincide with the anniversary of Stewart's 1999 U.S. Open win. National publicity and media promotion have been extensive and varied, with the roster of coverage ranging from traditional sources (Today--three segments; New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists; Los Angeles Times feature; etc.) to sports outlets (Golf Channel, NBC Sports, Sports Illustrated, Golf Digest) to religion publications (Guideposts, CBA Marketplace, Christian Retailing). Last month, Sam's Wholesale Clubs aired a five-minute promotional video on its "In Club TV." Total copies in print are now "approaching 400,000," reported the publisher.


With reporting by Dick Donahue.
Back To Bestsellers
--->