The race for the hardcover nonfiction top slot will be over next week, when you know which book is going to lead the hit parade, but over the last two months, the top spot was mostly shared between the two big diet books, Atkins for Life and The South Beach Diet. The latter takes the lead this week and its print stats in a brief two-month period are impressive. Back on April 21, when it first landed on PW's list, we reported sales of 125,000 copies after two trips to press. The latest count, after eight trips to press, is 600,000 copies. Rodale has lots more promotion plans on its slate. These include full-page ads in several health magazines (Prevention, Men's Health, Runner's World, etc.) and a direct-to-consumer ad campaign targeted to hit about seven million mailboxes in early July.
With reporting by Dick Donahue
