45 and Going Strong

Oprah picked #45 for her book club this past Thursday, making Canadian playwright/ actress Anne-Marie MacDonald her latest success story. The debut novel, Fall On Your Knees, was published in Canada in 1996 to great bestseller success; Simon & Schuster published the hardcover in the U.S. in April 1997. Reviews were stellar, including a starred one in PW. The opening sentence of our Forecast said: "Not a single line is superfluous in this richly layered tale of secrets within several generations of a Canadian family." Accolades included "feverishly intense" and "darkly humorous" and compliments for the author's "remarkable assurance of style, pacing and plotting as unexpected twists propel a complex story that builds inexorably to tragedy." At the time, the S&S hardcover sold about 18,000 copies, and the Scribner paperback had pre-Oprah sales of about 45,000. The publisher is now reprinting 25,000 hardcovers and 620,000 trade paperbacks. The day before Oprah made the announcement on her show, the Scribner edition was hovering around 19,000 on Amazon; within hours of the announcement, Fall on Your Knees was up to #39. The Thursday program also aired the book discussion for pick #44, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Hopefully, that discussion will fire up sales. The book was one of the poorest performing picks in the Oprah collection; the Vintage title is currently #14 in its sixth week on our trade paperback list; it landed at #7 and never went above #4. Its Amazon rank shortly after the discussion aired was #54.