Velocity, Velocity
by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 7/5/2004
Yes, that would be the word to describe the #1 national bestseller in the U.S. this week: Bill Clinton's My Life . Combined first-five-day sales at the three chains—Barnes & Noble, Borders and Waldenbooks—is close to 281,800. The BookScan number for the first five days is about 606,000. According to this week's Book News story on which other books might have benefited by the increased traffic in the retail marketplace, sales for the first week totaled about 935,000 copies. Clearly, Clinton's book is the fastest-selling nonfiction hardcover ever (we noted last week that the only book that was faster out of the gate was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, with about five million copies sold in the first 24 hours). Knopf reports 2.6 million copies in print so far, and at each of Clinton's book signings, at least 1,500 people were on line—sometimes more. Some retailers are even reporting the large-print edition of My Life among the nonfiction bestsellers last week; at Borders, it was #9 on its nonfiction chart.
