Customers that couldn’t get a physical copy of Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury were in good company. According to figures from NPD BookScan, the hottest book of the year sold 28,567 print copies in the three days it was available for sale last week (ended January 7). BookScan covers 80- 85% of all print sales, excluding those through libraries.
Although the figure is surprisingly low for a book that has captured the attention of the media and the President in such striking fashion, that number was still enough to make the White House tell-all the top-selling title in the country last week.
John Sargent, CEO of Holt parent company Macmillan, told the Wall Street Journal that Fire and Fury had a 150,000-copy first printing. The discrepancy between the announced first printing and last week’s sales is likely, in part, the result of Holt moving the book’s publication date up, from January 9 to January 5. Shipments of the book that were timed to hit stores early this week may have been on the road over the weekend.
The demand for the book was expressed more fairly through its e-book sales. The digital edition of Fire and Fury outsold the hardcover at Barnes & Noble and was #1 in the iBooks store last week. The book is also #1 in Amazon’s Kindle store. (Fire and Fury remains in the top spot on Amazon’s hardcover bestseller list, despite the fact that the retailer is still reporting that the print book will take two to four weeks to ship.)
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