ORMAN LEADS THE PACK
Check out PW's 1998 hardcover bestseller list. These are the books that, according to their publishers, sold the most last year. Leading the pack on the nonfiction side is Suze Orman's The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, with sales of close to 1.5 million copies; there are a total of 1.8 million copies in print of the Crown hardcover. Now Orman is one spot away from the top position this week with The Courage to Be Rich: Creating a Life of Material and Spiritual Abundance, published by Riverhead with an initial 675,000 copies. Orman's first book, You've Earned It, Don't Lose It, published by Newmarket Press in 1995, is currently in its 21st printing and has sold more than 400,000 copies in its combined hardcover, paperback and audio formats. For her new book, Orman visited 13 cities and appeared on PBS affiliates around the country for their March 1999 drive. Among the national shows that she has appeared on during the last week or so are Oprah, Dateline and Good Morning America. People is planning a feature.

VITTORIO VENIT, VIDIT, VICIT
Debuting in the #2 spot this week is Anne Rice's latest, Vittorio the Vampire. Officially published on March 24, it's the second in the author's "New Tales of the Vampires" series, following Pandora, which was published a year ago and sold more than 450,000 copies by the end of 1998. Rice is not touring this time out, so Knopf is spending the extra dollars on national television advertising -- which will include spots on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Good Morning America and Today. Knopf went out with a first printing of 500,000 copies, and accounts recorded huge sales on the first day the book landed in stores. Barnes &Noble sold 1200 copies at its superstores and 1000 at the mall stores. Rice's previous novel, The Vampire Armand, was the 13th bestselling novel in 1998, with sales of about 660,000 copies.

VANZANT D S IT AGAIN
Iyanala Vanzant, empowerment specialist, ordained minister and "Spiritual Life Counselor," adds a third national bestseller in just one year to her résumé. Simon &Schuster launched Yesterday, I Cried: Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving. with a first printing of 485,000 copies. Vanzant chose a rather unconventional approach to touring for her latest book: she will be speaking only at large churches in four cities-Atlanta, Los Angeles, Denver and Detroit. She will do the more traditional appearances on national TV and radio. Her other two recent bestsellers have achieved impressive print figures. In the Meantime has 825,000 copies in print after 23 trips to press; One Day My Soul Just Opened Up has 970,000 copies in print after 21 trips to press.AMS TOP 1998 SELLERS
Advanced Marketing Services, the national wholesaling arm for price clubs and mass merchandisers, sent us its top 25 hardcover fiction and nonfiction list just a bit too late to be included on our chart (that page went to press two days earlier than this column). On that chart, we compare PW's top 1998 rankings to those at a selected group of independents, chains, wholesalers and online booksellers. Interestingly, the top 15 fiction bestsellers on the AMS list bear a strong resemblance to PW's top 15 fiction bestsellers. In ranking order, the AMS top 15 novels are: Street Lawyer, Rainbow Six, Bag of Bones, Tell Me Your Dreams, Mirror Image, Long Ride Home, The Klone and I, You Belong to Me, A Man in Full, Point of Origin, I Know this Much Is True, When the Wind Blows, All Through the Night, The Loop and Paradise. Fourteen of these AMS bestsellers were on PW's top 15 list for 1998. In nonfiction's top 15, nine books overlapped: The Greatest Generation, 9 Steps to Financial Freedom, Something More, A Pirate Looks at Fifty, For the Love of the Game, Sugar Busters, The Day Diana Died, The Century and In the Meantime.