Raise Your Goblet!
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fastest-selling book in print history. As our news story notes, the gigantic 3.8-million-copy first printing had to be replenished within three days of the July 8 on-sale date, and the second printing, too, establishes a new record--a hefty three million copies. Few hardcover books ever reach that figure and certainly none after less than a week in the stores. (Scholastic's blockbuster obviously would be #1 on PW's list if we included children's titles.) Our #1 adult bestseller is Danielle Steel's The House on Hope Street, which was launched by Delacorte with a nearly one-million-copy first printing. Nice, but not even within shooting distance of young Mr. Potter: Goblet is outselling Ms. Steel by about 100 to one--another record-breaking statistic. It's unlikely that any author or book could ever exceed these numbers, though there is one with a good shot: Harry Potter #5.

A Tour with a Twist
Following its May 19 publication, Lance Armstrong's inspirational memoir, It's Not About the Bike, written with Sally Jenkins, has mushroomed from a first printing of 108,500 copies to 180,000 after six trips to press. Armstrong's vast popularity and high visibility--particularly now, as he defends his Tour de France championship (as we go to press, he's once again in the lead)--have clearly been a major factor in the book's recent sales surge. After jumping back onto our list last week it's now at #11. Putnam's intensive media campaign hasn't hurt, either--a feature profile on 60 Minutes II; a live interview on Good Morning America; a 15-city TV satellite tour; a live videocast from France, carried on Yahoo.com; and interviews with the New York Times and USA Today. In addition, an excerpt from the book appeared in Vanity Fair, and Outside magazine featured Armstrong on its May cover. During the Tour, Penguin Putnam's Web site has carried daily reports on Armstrong's progress, while fax updates have been sent to bookstores and bike shops across the country for promotion on special "Follow Lance Armstrong" easelbacks. Look for another wave of media coverage should Armstrong win the Tour de France on July 23. And there's more: he's slated to compete in the Sydney Olympics in September--additional book sales, anyone?

Julie's All Heart
From #10 to #5 to #2--not bad for a book's first three weeks on the bestseller list. That's the PW track record for Julie Garwood's latest, Heartbreaker, her contemporary suspense fiction debut that was published on July 11 as a Pocket Books Hardcover. Garwood's novels, 16 of which have been New York Times bestsellers, have a combined in-print total of more than 30 million; Heartbreaker's figure is 315,000 after five printings. The popular author is in the midst of a 13-city tour that will run through July 28; Pocket's promotional coverage includes local TV and radio, national and local print media, as well as national online interviews. National TV advertising is running on Lifetime, A&E and CNN, and the first serial appeared in the July Cosmopolitan. The publisher's Web marketing includes excerpts from the novel, a consumer contest and e-mail notifications sent to a core romance fan list and a mystery/thriller list.

More from the W.E.B. Site
The Fighting Agents, the fourth and final volume of W.E.B. Griffin's Men at War series, about the OSS during World War II, was launched by Putnam with a 165,000-copy print run. Putnam is doing national print advertising for the book, which, like the others in the series, was originally published as a paperback original in the mid-'80s under the pseudonym Alex Baldwin. Griffin's next hardcover for Putnam, Special Ops, will be published in January; it continues the Brotherhood of War series that has been dormant since 1988.

With reporting by Dick Donahue.
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