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Changes at the Top
Daisy Maryles, with Dick Donahue -- 11/17/97
Three of the four weekly PW bestseller charts have new books at the top and all landed in that coveted slot after just one week in the stores. Only Michael Crichton's Airframe (Ballantine) retained the top spot. It was a big week for James Patterson; his latest Alex Cross book, Cat &Mouse, topped the list and sales were so strong that Little, Brown went back to press for 25,000 more copies after a hefty 500,000-copy first printing. Two of Patterson's paperbacks, Jack &Jill and Kiss the Girls, are among the mass market top five and are flying out of the stores. Patterson is doing a 12-city tour and LB's $1-million marketing campaign included 3200 floor displays. And talk about a responsive author: Patterson changed the ending of the book after reps and booksellers expressed their disappointment with the original ending in the advance reading copies.
Little, Brown also took the top spot on the nonfiction hardcover list, with Kevyn Aucoin's Making Faces. The make-up artist's client roster includes such well known -- not to mention beautiful -- women as Cindy Crawford, Elizabeth Hurley, Whitney Houston, Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts, Janet Jackson, Demi Moore, etc., etc. First printing was 164,000 copies, but with Aucoin's famed techniques and full-color instructions available in book form for the first time, and a full hour on Oprah, it's no surprise that a 35,000-second printing had to be ordered.

It's also no surprise when Stephen King takes over the lead position, and that's what the horror-meister did on our trade paper list with the fourth installment in The Dark Tower series, Wizard and Glass. The book went on sale November 4 with a 1.5-million-copy first printing; Plume has already gone back to press for 150,000 more.
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