At the Top of Her Form

According to our figures for 2001 (Mar. 18), Nora Roberts sold more paperbacks nationwide last year than any other writer, including J.K. Rowling--sales for Roberts's eight new bestsellers amounted to about 14 million copies. Her latest, Three Fates, book #145 for this author who began her writing career in 1981, jumped onto the list in the #1 spot (typical for Roberts). It was released with a 500,000 first printing. She is doing a three-week tour (she does one annually) and publisher Putnam notes that she is drawing larger crowds than ever. She is also sitting pretty atop the mass market chart for the second week in a row with The Villa; publisher Jove reports 2.1 million copies in print. Penguin Putnam notes that there are more than 145 million copies of Roberts's books in print. Here's another fun statistic: for the last 20 years, an average of 13 Roberts books were sold every minute; in 2001, that average jumped to 34 books per minute.