Mac Daddy

Becoming Steve Jobs, the biography by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, debuts on our Hardcover Nonfiction list at #6, with more than 12.5K print units sold. Apple granted the authors interviews with four executives, including CEO Tim Cook, who, in the book, criticizes Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography, saying it did Jobs a “tremendous disservice.” Isaacson’s work may not have had the benefit of positive tweets from Apple execs or a prepublication author q&a session at the Apple store in Soho, as Becoming Steve Jobs did, but its timing clearly had a big impact on sales. The book was originally scheduled for a Nov. 21, 2011, release, but S&S bumped it up to October 24 after Jobs died October 5. It sold 379K copies in its first week and went on to sell 1.7 million in hardcover.

Ready for the Big Time

Sales of the trade paperback edition of Ready Player One, Ernest Cline’s 2011 debut, reached 3,134 units this week, up 92% from 1,633 copies last week, following the March 25 announcement that Steven Spielberg will direct the movie adaptation. Warner Bros. bought the screen rights in 2010, within a day of the SF novel’s acquisition by Crown. Call it a case of life imitating art: the novel, set in a futuristic virtual world, features a main character who studies the work of a number of 20th-century directors, including Spielberg.

Strike a Pose

Rachel Brathen, who, as Yoga Girl, has built an Instagram following that’s 1.3 million strong, now has a book of the same name, which debuts at #16 on this week’s Trade Paperback list, with 6,716 units sold. (For more on how apps and social media are influencing books of photography, see “Going Mobile,” p. 28.)

Movie Tie-in Watch

With 17.5K units sold this week, the mass market movie tie-in edition of The Longest Ride, by Nicholas Sparks, maintains the #10 spot on our overall bestseller list for the second week in a row, and it also holds steady at #2 on our Mass Market Paperback list. The trade paperback movie tie-in had a good week, too, selling almost 7K units—4% more than last week. It’s #13 on our Trade Paperback list. The movie hits theaters April 10.

Back for Seconds

Back in the Day Bakery, Made with Love, #3 on our Hardcover Nonfiction list with 14K print units sold, is the follow-up to Cheryl Day and Griffith Day’s The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook (2012). When the first book launched, the authors were mostly known in the immediate area of their Savannah, Ga., bakery; the book sold 1,845 print copies in its initial week. An extensive book tour and media campaign, which included appearances on Martha and The Chew, introduced the Days to a wider audience, and to date, according to BookScan, the book has sold more than 46K units in hardcover. Per publisher Artisan, the cookbook is now in its ninth printing, with 113K copies in print; prepub media attention for Made with Love in outlets such as Southern Living and Food & Wine created a demand that sent the book into its third printing, totaling 65K copies, by the time of publication.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins Riverhead 38,745
2 The Stranger Harlan Coben Dutton 33,963
3 Paper Towns John Green Speak 25,848
4 Dead Wake Erik Larson Crown 25,066
5 I’ve Got You Under My Skin Mary Higgins Clark S&S/Pocket 22,840
6 American Sniper (movie tie-in) Chris Kyle Morrow 21,522
7 NYPD Red 3 Patterson/Karp Little, Brown 20,219
8 The Escape David Baldacci Grand Central 17,908
9 All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doerr Scribner 17,844
10 The Longest Ride (movie tie-in) Nicholas Sparks Grand Central 17,449