Thanks in part to the allure of the silver screen, two authors are hitting doubles this week. With the Hugh Grant starrer About a Boy garnering great reviews (and holding its own at the b.o. against the Spider-Man and Star Wars juggernauts), Nick Hornby's novel is getting a major shot in the arm. Riverhead shipped 250,000 copies of its movie tie-in edition, while keeping the original trade paperback in print (the in-print total for both versions is 430,000). Grant and the film's other topliners, Toni Collette and Rachel Weisz, have made the rounds of national shows, including The View, Today, Entertainment Tonight and Jay Leno. And that's not all: Riverhead's trade paper release of Hornby's How to Be Good has 170,000 copies in print after four trips back to press.
On the distaff side, Rebecca Wells's Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is getting a big boost from its heavily hyped movie version, which opens Friday. The Harper trade paper and mass market editions are already in the first and second spots, respectively, on our lists. Warner Brothers has pulled out all the stops for its promo campaign, which includes tie-ins with Neutrogena and 1-800-FLOWERS. On May 29, stars Ashley Judd, Sandra Bullock and Ellen Burstyn (the cast also includes James Garner and Maggie Smith) joined Ya-Yas from around the country for an hour with Oprah. To reach Ya-Ya devotees (who can often be found on www.Ya-Ya.com) HarperPerennial ran two contests—one for pre-release screenings, the other for two tickets to L.A. to attend the premiere (the film is based on both Ya-Ya Sisterhood and its prequel, Little Altars Everywhere). Current numbers: for the Divine Secrets mass market movie-tie-in, 1,308,000 copies after 69 trips to press; for the trade paper edition, four million (plus 79,000 in hardcover); and for the Perennial Little Altars, 1.5 million.
With reporting by Dick Donahue
