Not only has Nora Roberts grabbed our unofficial crown for "most prolific author for the fourth year in a row" ("Bestsellers of 2000," Mar. 19), she's currently claiming two spots on our weekly charts. The Villa debuts in the #3 hardcover fiction spot, with 575,000 copies in print following Putnam's March 19 pub date. The megasellling author is off on what executive publicity director Liz Perl calls "her trademark gigantic tour"—in this case, 22 cities in four weeks. Perl noted that Roberts has been drawing upward of 200 people at each stop. One of the junket's highlights was a wine-tasting party for Bay Area booksellers (the book is set in California's wine country) last Friday night at Julius's Castle, a sumptuous San Francisco eatery. In addition, Nora was just "outed" as J.D. Robb, the author of this week's
#4 mass market title, Betrayal in Death. Capitalizing on that book's title, Berkley mounted a "Betrayed by J.D. Robb" campaign to tie in with its author's unmasking. Also, we'll go out on a (pretty solid) limb and predict that Carolina Moon, Jove's reprint of Roberts's spring 2000 bestseller (eight weeks on our fiction list), will hit our mass market list week after next. Laydown date is April 3; first printing is two million. And there's more: Roberts's The Stanislaski Sisters (Silhouette) just wound up a seven-week run on the mass market roster.
With reporting by Dick Donahue
