James Bond smashes sales figures

This article is more than 11 years old
Sebastian Faulks
'Inspired choice' ... Sebastian Faulks. Photograph: Martin Godwin

Devil May Care, the new James Bond novel by Sebastian Faulks, has become Penguin's fastest selling hardback fiction title ever, with 44,093 copies sold in the four days since it hit the shops.

The figures follow a publicity campaign of true Harry Potter proportions, which saw pre-release announcements of Sebastian Faulks's stint as Ian Fleming reaching the news pages of all the major newspapers.

Waterstone's alone sold over 19,000 copies, with the £100 special souvenir edition selling out in one morning. Queues began outside the chain's Piccadilly store from 4.30pm the previous day. A luxury edition, designed by Bentley and costing £750, also sold out its 300-copy print run in under two hours in the UK.

While JK Rowling has regularly exceeded the Devil May Care sales figures - the final book in her Harry Potter series, Deathly Hallows, sold three million copies in its opening weekend - the Rowling is something of an anomaly. Elsewhere, only Terry Pratchett and Martina Cole, genre writers with an enormous loyal fanbase, come close, regularly shifting 30,000-40, 000 copies in the first week. Among literary authors such as Faulks, such figures are unheard of.

Following in the footsteps of Thomas' Harris's Hannibal, published in 1999 and selling 1.5m copies that year, Penguin's success with their new Bond obviously owes a debt to the new lease of life given the Bond film franchise since 2006's Casino Royale.

"But that doesn't discount from what has been an absolutely brilliant piece of publishing in terms of awareness and agitation", said Joel Rickett of the Bookseller.

"Sebastian Faulks was clearly an inspired choice, as someone possessed of the requisite dryness, humour and narrative drive, but who wouldn't take the task too seriously".

When not writing as Ian Fleming, Sebastian Faulks's most recent novel is Engelby, about a Cambridge student in the 1970s, published last year by Hutchinson. According to Rickett, the early signs are that sales for Engelby have also been boosted considerably.

Penguin, who own the rights to Ian Fleming's Bond catalogue, but not to the author's literary estate, have also had considerable success with newly designed paperback editions of the original Bond novels.

"We are absolutely delighted with the figures so far," said Joanna Prior, Penguin's director of marketing and publicity.

Asked whether Penguin had been in talks with the Fleming estate to capitalise on the success and continue with new Bond/Fleming books, Prior confirmed that there were no plans as yet.

"At present, we're all just concentrating on the current success, and on the plans for publishing the paperback next year.

"Sebastian Faulks made it clear that this would be a one-off project, and our current agreement with the Fleming estate was for this project only."

But Penguin have not written off the idea of continuing the series, possibly with different literary authors standing in as Fleming.

After all, you only live twice.
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