Water for Elephants Spends One Year on Bestsellers List

By Judith Rosen -- Publishers Weekly, 4/17/2008 8:08:00 AM

This week marks a milestone for writer Sara Gruen and her Chapel Hill, N.C.-based publisher Algonquin Books. The paperback edition of her novel Water for Elephants has been on the New York Times bestsellers list for 52 consecutive weeks and has 1.8 million copies in print. The hardcover edition was on the Times list for 13 weeks and has 285,000 copies in print.

The next closest Algonquin bestseller, according to publicity director Michael Taeckens, was Robert Morgan’s novel Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage, which was selected as an Oprah Book Club pick in 2000 and subsequently stayed on the Times list for 12 weeks.