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Tag: Book sales (1-10 of 10)

On the Books: Nielsen Bookscan reports boom in graphic novel sales

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Americans have bought 5,618,000 graphic novels in 2014, Nielsen Bookscan reports—a 10-percent increase over last year. The rising success of the genre can be attributed to reliable fan favorites (The Walking Dead, Batman and Diary of a Wimpy Kid), the comeback of manga (Attack on Titan, Naruto, and One Piece), and breakout bestsellers like the space opera/fantasy series Saga (Image Comics), which topped lists in both its digital and paper formats. Similarly, Diamond Comics Distributors reports a near 4-percent rise in year-to-date sales and a near 6-percent rise in year-to-date units moved. The graphic novel business, including digital and periodical comics, made more than $870 million in 2013. [Publishers Weekly]

Other news indicating a resurgence in graphic novels is FilmNation Entertainment’s purchase of the film rights to The Undertaking of Lily Chena dark novel about “corpse brides” that “was inspired by an Economist article about the tradition of post-mortem marriage in China.” The New York distributor plans to turn the Danica Novgorodoff work into a Chinese-language movie, reporting it has had success in similar Chinese ventures before. [Mediabistro]

Another bestselling novelist is in the making his enthusiasm for the military known: James Patterson is donating 180,000 of his hardcover books to American troops. “Every day the men and women of our armed forces sacrifice on our behalf. I can’t think of a more deserving group to receive these books.” [USA Today]

On the Books: Americans appear on Man Booker shortlist for first time

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The shortlist of contenders for the United Kingdom’s prestigious Man Booker Prize, announced today, includes American authors Joshua Ferris and Karen Joy Fowler among the unprecedentedly multinational selection. The competition—which until this year was only open to citizens of the the U.K., U.K. Commonwealth, Ireland, and Zimbabwe—considered writers from any country, as long as they were published in English in the United Kingdom. Here is the list in full:

Joshua Ferris (U.S.), To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (Viking)
Richard Flanagan (Australian), The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Chatto & Windus)
Karen Joy Fowler (U.S.), We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Serpent’s Tail)
Howard Jacobson (British), J (Jonathan Cape)
Neel Mukherjee (British), The Lives of Others (Chatto & Windus)
Ali Smith (British), How to be Both (Hamish Hamilton)

Despite fears of British authors being shut out by American literary powerhouses, Brits still dominated the competition, nabbing three of the six spots on the shortlist. AC Grayling, chair of the judges, said the selection is “a strong, thought-provoking shortlist which we believe demonstrates the wonderful depth and range of contemporary fiction in English.” The winner of the $80,000 award will be announced in London on Oct. 14. [NPR]

Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards’ children’s book, Gus & Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar, hits shelves today. Published by Little, Brown and illustrated by Richards’ daughter Theodora, the book is about Richards’ childhood memories of jazz-musician grandfather Gus, who shared his love for music and London with a young Keith. [USA Today]

Publishers Weekly conducted an informal poll of more than 20 independent bookstores, finding that despite earlier predictions, most of the stores enjoyed a successful summer. Though overall book sales fell nearly 8 percent in the first half of 2014, PW‘s poll shows that many small booksellers saw a surge in sales over the last quarter. Storeowners attribute part of the increase to the Hachette-Amazon feud—Powell’s Books of Portland, Ore., for example, received 10,000 pre-orders for Edan Lepucki’s California after getting a mention on The Colbert Report.

'12 Years a Slave' book sales up after Oscars

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12 Years a Slave is getting a post-Oscar bump — for the book it was based on.

The 19th-century memoir by ex-slave Solomon Northup jumped from No. 326 on Amazon.com before Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony to No. 19 on Monday afternoon.

The film was directed by Steve McQueen and stars Chiwetel Ejiofor. It was among last year’s most highly praised releases and won the Oscar for Best Picture. It was the first film directed by a black person to win for Best Picture.

The book and the movie tell of how the free-born black Northup was kidnapped and forced into slavery. Thanks to the movie’s success, interest in the book has been revived and public high schools are starting to add it to course lists.

Sales for 'Fifty Shades of Grey' trilogy reach 100M copies

Fifty Shades of Grey has joined the 100 million club.

Vintage Books announced Wednesday that sales for E L James’ sexually explicit trilogy have reached 100 million copies and have spent 100 weeks on The New York Times‘ paperback best-seller list. The novels have been translated into 51 languages, including Hebrew, Icelandic and Korean. With a film adaptation planned for 2015, many more sales are likely.

James’ books, which originated as fan fiction inspired by Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books, immediately topped best-seller lists after Vintage acquired them in 2012. Vintage is an imprint of Penguin Random House.

He won't be back: Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'Total Recall' debuts to weak sales

Arnold Schwarzenegger promised us his new memoir Total Recall would tell the story we don’t know, but he never counted on people not wanting to know that story in the first place.

The tell-all hit shelves on Oct. 1 and only managed to move 21,000 copies in its first week of publication, according to figures provided by Nielsen Bookscan. The sales were enough to land it on the third spot of Top 10 Adult Non Fiction list, ahead of Stephen Colbert’s America Again and Neil Young’s Waging Heavy Peace, but behind Mark Owen’s mega-seller No Easy Day.

Total Recall was extensively promoted, with Schwarzenegger starring in a cinematic book trailer (debuted exclusively on EW.com) and making appearances on The Daily Show and 60 Minutes, where he spoke candidly of his affair with Mildred Baena. There’s still time to pump up the sales, however. We are heading into the holiday season after all, and what would make a better gift for your relatives than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s memoir? (Well, at least my relatives.)

Read more:
Arnold Schwarzenegger on ’60 Minutes’: Several affairs to remember — VIDEO
Arnold Schwarzenegger reveals how ex-wife Maria Shriver confronted him about his secret son in ‘Total Recall’
Watch the trailer for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s memoir ‘Total Recall’ — EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

J.K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy' sees respectable sales figures during first week

J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy is reportedly “on track to become the year’s bestselling novel in hardcover,” according to EVP of Little, Brown Michael Pietsch.

Which is another way of saying it’ll be one of the best-selling novels of the year other than E L James’ paperback Fifty Shades trilogy. Nielsen BookScan reports that Rowling’s first novel for adults sold 157,000 hardcover copies in its first week of publication, and Little, Brown announced that the novel has sold 375,000 copies across all formats. The book only went on sale on Thursday (whereas books are normally published on Tuesdays), but it fell short of the record set for adult books by Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which moved 550,946 copies in its first week of publication in 2009.

The Casual Vacancy has exceeded our expectations,” Pietsch said. While it may turn out to be the best-selling hardcover fiction of 2012, it probably won’t be the top-selling hardcover overall. No Easy Day, Mark Owen’s firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, sold 254,000 copies in its first week and continues to do well, moving 52,000 copies this past week against Rowling’s adult debut.

Will you be purchasing a copy of The Casual Vacancy?

Read more:
J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’: 10 NSFW lines you would NEVER see in a Harry Potter book
J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Casual Vacancy’: Read EW’s review
J.K. Rowling considering a ‘director’s cut’ of the ‘Harry Potter’ books

Katniss wears the crown: 'Hunger Games' supplants 'Harry Potter' as best selling-series on Amazon

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Move on over, Harry.  It’s Katniss’s turn to wear the crown.

In a statement released today, Amazon.com announced  that  The Hunger Games trilogy has supplanted Harry Potter as the best-selling series of all time on the website.

“Since debuting in 2008, Katniss Everdeen and the Hunger Games have taken the world by storm, much as Harry Potter did a decade before,” Sara Nelson, the editorial director of books and Kindle at Amazon, said.

In what is yet another testament to the immense popularity of Suzanne Collins’ post-apocalyptic novels, the three-part Hunger Games saga overtook the seven-book Harry Potter series in just four years.

The figures take both print and Kindle book sales into account.

Does this news have you itching for some Katniss? No need to fret, ‘The Hunger Games’ Blu-ray/DVD hits stores tomorrow.

'Fifty Shades of Grey' author netting $1.34 million a week?

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As Anastasia Steele would say, “Holy crap!” E L James, the doyenne of erotic Twilight fan-fiction, reportedly earns $1.34 million per week, which breaks down to around $191,000 per day. That’s not quite Christian Grey money, but James is getting close. Gawker crunched the numbers here:

++ E.L. James earns 7% royalty on every $14 paperback and 25% royalty on every $10 ebook sold.

++ Last month 4 million paperbacks and 1 million ebooks were sold.

Who knows if the numbers are exactly right, but it’s been obvious for a while that the enormous success of Fifty Shades of Grey is not a flash in the pan but an ongoing phenomenon that won’t go away any time soon — even if you’re one of the people who wish it would. READ FULL STORY

Updated figures for 'The Hunger Games' books: More than 36.5M in print in the U.S. alone

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In explaining the phenomenon fueling The Hunger Games film’s massive $155 million opening, many box office prognosticators referred to the 24 million copies of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy printed in the U.S. alone. But now it seems we’ve all been aiming our arrows far too low. Scholastic released updated figures today, and it looks like there are more than 36.5 million copies of Katniss Everdeen’s saga available domestically. Publishers are notoriously cagey about releasing sales data, but when the numbers are this robust, there’s reason to brag. Here’s the breakdown by book: READ FULL STORY

What's the last book you bought?

Want to know who’s buying books these days? Well, consumer marketing firm Bowker has just released its 2009 U.S. Book Consumer Demographics and Buying Behaviors Annual Report --and it’s pretty interesting. Here’s their summary:

  • More than 40% of Americans over the age of 13 purchased a book in 2009 and the average age of the American book buyer is 42.
  • Women lead men in overall purchases, contributing 64% of sales. Even among detective and thriller genres, women top 60% of the sales. Where do men catch up? Fantasy titles are purchased evenly by men and women.
  • Baby Boomers spend. The boomer generation is the largest purchasing generation, making up 30% of sales. Their elders contribute 16%.
  • More income doesn’t mean more book purchases. 32% of the books purchased in 2009 were from households earning less than $35,000 annually, and 20% of those sales were for children’s books.
  • Americans like people. The biggest selling nonfiction genre is biography.

So, Shelf Lifers, where do you fit in all this? How many books do you buy a year on average? What’s the last book you bought?

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