And without further ado, the most current Bookscan numbers for several selections, as requested yesterday morning:
20981 Cinnamon Kiss
17171 The Sea
3584 Europe Central (cloth) paperback 1st week: 1093
6523 Veronica
56320 On Beauty
61684 Everyone Worth Knowing
15,942 Maneater Cloth/16255 paper
71 574 Lipstick Jungle
10 808 Indecision
One that immediately leaps out is the numbers for THE SEA — our intrepid spy thought the same thing, that this is “very good for literary fiction,” especially considering the book’s only been out about a month or so. Bottom line? Maybe awards really do help.
Or do they? Granted, Viking could have waited to produce the paperback edition of EUROPE CENTRAL, but not doing so seemed to be a wise move, as they’ve sold 1/3 of the copies in paperback in a single week as they did for the hardcover’s entire run. But Gaitskill’s VERONICA seems a bit sluggish, though I suspect it still might be outselling Rene Steinke and Christopher Sorrentino’s NBA nominated novels…
Zadie Smith is doing reasonably well — much better, evidently, than THE AUTOGRAPH MAN did. And in the “glam lit” wars, Bushnell’s the clear winner, though maybe I’m the only one pleasantly surprised by the numbers for Weisberger — this book actually translates outside of Manhattan? Who knew?