Nicholas Sparks hit the ground running with his first novel, The Notebook, published in 1996. It was one of the top three fiction bestsellers published that year and spent an impressive 54 weeks on PW's weekly hardcover list. He has been running successfully ever since, with eight more novels and a nonfiction title. His latest, True Believer, hits the top of the fiction chart, and Warner Books reports 951,000 copies in print after two trips to press. The crowds at his signings have been phenomenal. At Sparks's first stop, Waldenbooks in New Bern, N.C., he sold a record-breaking 3,000 copies, plus several hundred more of his backlist titles. In Charlotte, N.C., Barnes & Noble reported its largest crowd ever for any author—about 1,300 people waited in line for an autograph.