‘Real’ Success for Blog-to-Book Author Leake

Lisa Leake had the wake-up call of her life in January 2010.

“I saw Michael Pollan on Oprah, and he was talking about where our food comes from,” she said. “Before that, I had never bought anything organic or been to a farmers market, and I had never read an ingredient list.” After a few months of research, Leake started up a blog, 100 Days of Real Food. For a little more than three months, her family pledged to avoid “white flour, white sugar, [and] anything in a package with more than five ingredients. We also avoided conventional produce and ate only local meat.”

After some local press, and attention on Food Inc.’s Facebook page and the Yahoo homepage, the blog found a large, consistent readership; it now gets four million monthly page views. This week, 100 Days of Real Food debuts at #1 on our Hardcover Nonfiction list, with 16,457 units sold at outlets reporting to Nielsen BookScan. As for Leake’s family, they still follow the strict rules of eating real food 95% of the time. “The difference now,” Leake says, “is if the kids go to a party, they can have cake.”—Joy Bean

Upping the (Penny) Ante

Louise Penny’s The Long Way Home, her 10th mystery featuring Chief Insp. Armand Gamache of the Quebec Sûreté, debuts at #1 on our Hardcover Fiction list, with 19,381 units sold. This marks the first time that Penny has taken the top spot on PW’s list. A national eight-city author tour backs the 400,000-copy first printing, and massive advertising in print and online will support the publicity and marketing efforts.

Minotaur, Penny’s longtime publisher, signed a new three-book deal with the author in April 2014, and has released a boxed gift set of the first three Gamache books—Still Life, A Fatal Grace, and The Cruelest Month. The Gamache Re-Read Campaign (gamacheseries.com), an online promotion aimed at encouraging fans to revisit the entire series, has, according to Minotaur, generated more than 100K unique visitors to date.—Peter Cannon

Strong Start for ‘Weakness’

Heroes Are My Weakness by Susan Elizabeth Phillips is a little bit Stephen King, a little bit Daphne du Maurier, and it’s also this week’s #16 on our Hardcover Fiction list, with more than 4K copies sold. In June, PW named the title one of our top 10 romance books for fall (“He’s a reclusive writer whose macabre imagination creates chilling horror novels. She’s a down-on-her-luck actress reduced to staging kids’ puppet shows. When they’re snowbound together, will their old love rekindle?”), and USA Today revealed the cover. Phillips said of the image,which shows a woman cavorting in the snow in a kicky red coat and knee-high boots: “It reflects the cold, wintry setting of an isolated island off the coast of Maine and the feisty spirit of a heroine who refuses to give up, even when the odds are stacked against her.” With its deft homage to Rebecca, Phillips’s new novel, which PW’s starred review said serves to “fulfill and subvert the reader’s expectations,” is poised to be an odds-on favorite.—Carolyn Juris

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 Sycamore Row John Grisham Dell 49,016
2 Minecraft: Combat Handbook Scholastic Scholastic 43,511
3 If I Stay Gayle Forman Penguin/Speak 41,644
4 The Homecoming Robyn Carr Mira 37,243
5 If I Stay (movie tie-in) Gayle Forman Penguin/Speak 29,487
6 The Fault in Our Stars John Green Penguin/Speak 28,535
7 Four Veronica Roth HarperCollins/ Tegen 25,729
8 The Best of Me (movie tie-in) Nicholas Sparks Grand Central 23,510
9 Where She Went Gayle Forman Speak 21,789
10 Unbroken Laura Hillenbrand Random House 19,938