In addition to counting Curtis Sittenfeld‘s beans, yesterday’s breathless revelation by the NYT business section that the publishing industry is a crapshoot included a tidbit about Charles Frazier‘s $8 million advance for Thirteen Moons, which “sold only 240,000 copies” after its release last October, less than a third of Random House‘s reported printing (and I think we all know what “reported” means in this context). The only “news” there, though, is the number, which has had seven months to build from the 100,000 figure we quoted from the AP last November.
PS: To the potty-mouthed crank who emailed to let us know we “[have] your head in the sand and your thumb up your a–” for ignoring Frazier’s so-called failure in only selling his novel at the rate of 30,000 copies a month: Apart from the fact that Sarah’s November post shows we didn’t ignore it, we remain unconvinced that every overpriced followup to an unexpected success, or even every overpriced debut, requires a post-mortem dissection from us. There aren’t enough hours in the day, and we’re not about to cut into our party-hopping schedule to indulge your petty resentments. (Besides, I have enough of my own without taking on anybody else’s.)