Boy, It's Fun to Have Big-time Releases Come Out. Is That What Fall is Like?

For the second week in a row, there was energy in in the store as folks came in to purchase the new novels by Thomas Pynchon and Richard Russo. In the end, the former outsold the latter by 50%. We also had a nice bump on Eugenia Kim's The Calligrapher's Daughter, an author with some local connections and a great champion in our bookseller Anne.

Our hardcover fiction bestsellers for the week ending August 8th:

1. Inherent Vice, by Thomas Pynchon (Bosweller's Best at 20% off)

2. That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo (same)

3. The Calligrapher's Daughter, by Eugenia Kim (see above)

4. The Girl who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson (also a Best, and last week's #1)

5. Fool, by Christopher Moore (Lamb was #98 on NPR beach reads)

6. The Defector, by Daniel Silva (our sales on this have far exceeded what Downer Avenue Schwartz used to sell. This is a good example of a book that is selling to folks that frequented our Shorewood location. Also, I'm pretty good at talking it up. We sold two backlist titles last week to new readers as well).

7. The Help, by Katherine Stockett. (flurry of publicity about how folks are reading this created more people who want to read this).

8. The Strangers, by Anita Brookner. (OK, that was me.)

9. Jericho's Fall, by Stephen Carter

10. The Dead of Winter, by Rennie Airth (selling substantially better than his last one, which my coworker Catherine at Schwartz said was disappointing).

Still not selling is Jonathan Tropper's new novel, despite our over-the top rec in both our email newsletter and event calendar. This week Entertainment Weekly made a similarly bold proclamation, putting it on their must list and also giving it a big A-rated write up.

We were struck by the similarities in type and background color of these three recently-released novels. We'd probably only noticed it because our Boswell Best titles are currently arranged by title.

August Rush--Stieg Larrson's Word of Mouth Bestseller Explodes

One of the books highlighted in Geeta Sharma-Jensen's column about hot books for fall, The Girl Who Played with Fire, has been our bestselling non-event hardcover fiction novel since we've opened. I spoke to my friends at Micawbers and they concurred--and they've been open a lot longer than we have. Great word-of-mouth on the first book that continued throughout its hardcover life have led to the likelihood this will be #1 on the New York Times for its first week out. Ingram, our primary wholesaler, totally sold out, reinforcing that belief.

It didn't hurt that Michiko Kakutani jumped the gun at the New York Times with a good review; folks came in surprised that the book wasn't coming out for a few weeks. Why does she do this? To set the tone for the book I think. She gets credit for a good review if she likes a book and it sells; for a bad review, she is effectively responded to by other critics who like the book.

It's a big August for names, repeating last year. Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice lands today (August 4th) as well as Richard Russo's That Old Cape Magic lands today. Pat Conroy, Terry Goodkind, Philippa Gregory follow. Oh, and there are plans to release a James Patterson book every day, from August 15th through 31st. (No they aren't.)

Last year, publishers were trying to get out of the way of election coverage. This year they are trying to get folks to open their wallets before they shell out for Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. Look for that long-awaited thriller on September 15th. That should probably break our new record for first week hardcover fiction sales.