Dial's Big Push for Guernsey Paperback
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 5/4/2009 2:03:00 PM
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows which Dial Press published in hardcover last year, has more than 550,000 copies in print. It has spent more than seven months on bestseller lists and was named a best book of the year by Time, USA Today and a number of other outlets. And Dial is trying to make the paperback, which pubs today, even bigger. A 400,000-copy first printing, 15-city author tour, and sweepstakes for a book club to win a trip to the island of Guernsey are part of the plan that the house is hoping will garner Guernsey the kind of paperback sales seen by The Kite Runner, Water for Elephants, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.
Last year, PW called Guernsey, an epistolary novel, “charming”; it went on to become Indie Bound’s Best Indie Buzz Book (Fiction) of 2008, a Barnes & Noble Recommends Selection and a Pennie’s Pick at Costco. Borders has just selected the paperback as its next Book Club pick.
The “Take Your Book Club to Guernsey” sweepstakes should help generate buzz. Starting today, readers can enter to win a trip to the island of Guernsey, in the English Channel north of France, from October 2 to 5. Ten additional winners will receive 10 copies of the paperback.
