With a whopping 2.5 million first printing, book #11 in Tyndale's Left Behind series, Armageddon, grabs today's top fiction spot—the fifth in the series to perform that feat. Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins made five tour stops during the book's first week on sale (pub date was April 8), averaging 300 people at each event. Tyndale expects this latest volume to push the series total sales over the 57 million mark—perhaps in part because, as Jenkins has noted, "This one ends with the biggest cliffhanger of them all." One of the newest developments in the publisher's multimillion-dollar marketing campaign is the recruitment of an Armageddon "street team"—some 14,000 strong—who have joined forces with leftbehind.com to promote the series both online and offline. In addition, Tyndale introduced the first episode of the radio show, Armageddon: Experience in Sound and Drama, on April 9; the weekly drama will air on some 350 stations nationwide over the following 13 weeks.
With reporting by Dick Donahue
