Skip Christmas? Certainly not if you're John Grisham, whose Skipping Christmas appears on our charts for the third time since its 2001 debut. As a November 20 USA Today front-page Life section story noted, "Hardcover Becomes Perennial Holiday Gift." (And perennial seems the right word, especially since, as that story reported, a film version is due next Thanksgiving, directed by Chris Columbus, who guided the first two Harry Potter movies to box-office glory.) Not surprisingly, the book's in-print figures are typically Grishamesque: according to Doubleday associate publisher Suzanne Herz, the book has 2.2 million copies in print of the 2001 edition, 1.1 million of last year's version and 525,000 of the 2003 edition. (Actually, Herz explained, the editions are essentially the same, with differently colored covers each year.) Might Grisham's holiday novella be headed for a third run on PW's top 10 year-end bestseller lists? (It ranked #2 on our 2001 roster and #6 for 2002.) Place your bets, folks. Another seasonal returnee this week is Janet Evanovich's Visions of Sugar Plums, with 1.1 million copies in print of the new St. Martin's mass market edition. (Last year's hardcover spent eight weeks on our list and was #22 in the year-end rankings.)
—With reporting by Dick Donahue
