On Clinton's Coattails
Post–Father's Day dropoff outpaces gains from increased store traffic
by Charlotte Abbott -- Publishers Weekly, 7/5/2004
In the weeks before Bill Clinton's My Life went on sale, many in the industry hoped it would draw a tide of book buyers that might lift other titles. But while the memoir set a new nonfiction record—with sales of about 935,000 copies in the first week—most booksellers were reluctant to draw broad conclusions about its effect on other books. Looking at the Nielsen Bookscan numbers for the week, it's not hard to see why. Sales of major bestsellers were down by as much as 10% to 15% compared to the previous week, most likely because Father's Day—the second biggest bookselling holiday after Christmas for many bookstores—ended the week prior to Clinton's June 22 on-sale date.
The book most clearly helped by Bill's traffic was Hillary Clinton's Living History (S&S), which rose to #2 on Amazon after My Life went on sale, before dropping to #450 or so within a week. At Barnes & Noble, which promoted the two memoirs together in some stores, Hillary's trade paperback sold "almost double" what it had the previous week, according to Barnes & Noble merchandising v-p Bob Wietrak. And at wholesaler Ingram, senior buyer Nancy Stewart reported that demand for Hillary's hardcover increased by 12 times over the rate for the previous week.
The effect on other books was not as clear cut. At B&N and Borders, no other political titles popped significantly. At Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com, preorders pushed Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Brassey's, July) into the top 10, but that had little to do with Clinton. If anything, the torrent of coverage for My Life delayed U.S. media reports about the book by an anonymous senior CIA official, which challenges the Bush administration's position that Muslim militancy is a response to what the U.S. stands for culturally, rather than to U.S. policy.
In fiction, Janet Evanovich's Ten Big Ones (St. Martin's, June 22), reigned as the #1 hardcover fiction title for the week at every major account, though it sold about 20% of what Clinton's book did, according to Nielsen Bookscan. Though the increase in first-week sales for Evanovich's new hardcover over her last one was bigger than the growth between her two previous hardcovers, SMP publisher Matthew Shear was unwilling to discount the role of her loyal readership in prompting the increase. "As people buy the hardcovers and paperbacks, they become rabid fans, and that helps create an even bigger audience," However, he acknowledged that the higher sales may also have been due to the additional publicity the book received (including stories on CNN and in Newsweek) because it was released the same day as Clinton's.
Like Clinton's book, which sold slightly less than half of the first week's total on the first day, Evanovich also logged fast sales out of the gate that declined rapidly over the weekend. "We saw an uptick on Saturday," said Shear, "but sales were about a third of what they were on Tuesday. That's the same as always."
SMP saw a more dramatic rise in sales for another fiction title released on June 22: The Bourne Legacy by Eric Van Lustbader, which is based on the bestselling Robert Ludlum series. That book, which finished the week at #15 overall, according to Nielsen Bookscan, did twice as well as last hardcover in the series, The Tristan Betrayal (which was co-written by Ludlum and another writer). Shearer attributed the increase to the Matt Damon film The Bourne Supremacy, due out in July, as well as to Clinton store traffic.
In the final analysis, it might be more fair to measure Clinton's influence on the basis of his ability to make a bestseller of Alan Lakein's self-help manual How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life (Signet, 1974). It's certainly possible: the book, which is mentioned favorably in the prologue to My Life, has already climbed from #55,000 to about #1600 on Amazon in just over a week.
