Book Club Mania
by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 8/12/2002
It was a busy week—Today, Good Morning America and Live with Regis and Kelly all announced new selections, and all books saw a significant surge in sales as a result. Good Morning America, via Milwaukee's "The Bookies" book club, chose Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, which was already the #1 hardcover seller in the country. Co-host Diane Sawyer noted that the novel had been selected more than a month ago, and in that time people had "caught on" to how wonderful it was. Little, Brown printed 300,000 copies with the GMA "Read This!" logo on the cover. There are more than one million copies in print.
On Live's "Reading with Ripa" club, a less well-known book became the fourth selection—For Better, for Worse by Carole Matthews. The April Avon trade paperback was #94,773 on Amazon.com when the announcement was made on Wednesday, August 7; the next day it was #5. "A laugh-out-loud love story that marks the American debut of bestselling British author Matthews," according to Avon, which launched the book with a 30,000 printing and has increased the number of copies to 200,000.
Today's pick was Adam Haslett's You Are Not a Stranger, announced by bestselling author Jonathan Franzen (who not so long ago declined to be an Oprah book club selection). The Random House book, a debut short-story collection, received excellent reviews, including a starred one in PW. First printing was 13,500; second printing was about 95,000.
