Fall Book Sales: From Sizzle to Fizzle
Posted by Mariko Fujinaka in Bookselling publishing on October 12, 2009
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Author Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code, was released in September 2009 with much fanfare and high hopes for soaring sales. It delivered . . . for a while. The Lost Symbol sold almost two million copies during its first week of release, smashing sales records. But since then sales have declined quite a bit. Nielsen BookScan, which tallies book sales in the United States, reported that sales of The Lost Symbol fell from 401,000 copies the last week of September to 214,000 the first week of October, a decline of 47 percent.
Other titles suffered from declining or underwhelming sales as well, including anticipated works by such successful authors as Pat Conroy, Mitch Albom, Edward Kennedy, and Audrey Niffenegger, whose first book, Time Traveler’s Wife, was a best seller. Some suspect readers are waiting for paperback versions to come out rather than spend their cash on the more costly hardback editions. Others suggest, and hope, sales will perk up during the holidays as people purchase fall books as gifts.
The question of book sales is indeed a tricky one, since you have to factor in book advances and many other details. Kennedy’s memoir, True Compass, sold 39,000 copies the first week of October, falling 43 percent from the week before, but the publisher said it was happy with how the title was performing and remained confident and optimistic. The publisher paid Kennedy an advance of $8 million.
So where do you stand on book purchases? Are you rushing out to buy the latest books, or are you holding off for paperbacks? Will you put any book titles on your Christmas lists?
For more information on the state of book sales, see this article in the New York Times.
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