Small Screen, Big Sales

Diana Gabaldon’s 1991 time-travel romance, Outlander, launched a series that to date comprises eight hefty novels (most recently 2014’s Written in My Heart’s Own Blood), several related shorter novels and novellas, and a guide to the first four novels, 1999’s The Outlandish Companion. Gabaldon’s epic made the leap to the small screen in August 2014, and an updated edition of The Outlandish Companion, which incorporates a behind-the-scenes look at the Starz TV series, lands at #15 on this week’s Hardcover Nonfiction list with 3,803 print units sold (a second volume, which will cover books 5–8 in the series, will pub October 27). The TV show, predictably, has renewed interest in the long-running series; here, we look at how the mass market editions of the first four books have fared.

Other books that got a broadcast boost:

The March 29 airing of the HBO Scientology documentary Going Clear, based on Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name, sent sales of the paperback edition flying last week, up 172% over the prior week, from 1,047 units to 2,853 units. The enhanced e-book version is #1 on this week’s iBooks Religion & Spirituality list, up from #3 the week before.

The Emperor of All Maladies, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, saw sales of its 2011 paperback jump 137% this week over last (from 1,866 units to 4,429); the Ken Burns documentary, based on Mukherjee’s Pulitzer Prize–winning “biography of cancer,” began airing Mar. 30.

Other Notable Debuts

The Harder They Come by T.C. Boyle
Hardcover Fiction, #22

This is Boyle’s first book with Ecco after leaving longtime publisher Viking.

In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria
Hardcover Nonfiction, #15

In his 2014 commencement keynote address at Sarah Lawrence College, Zakaria extolled the virtues of the liberal arts while conceding, “I grew up in India. Some of my best friends are engineers.”

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson
Hardcover Nonfiction #24

Vanity Fair contributing editor Monica Lewinsky, no stranger to the subject of Ronson’s book, interviewed the author on camera in advance of its publication.

Singing for Her Supper

Country singer Trisha Yearwood has racked up numerous awards, including three Grammys, accolades from the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music, and a Daytime Emmy for her Food Network show, Trisha’s Southern Kitchen, which began airing in 2012. Her third cookbook, Trisha’s Table, is her first to publish since the TV program launched and debuts this week at #3 on our Hardcover Nonfiction list. Here’s how its numbers compare to first-week sales for the two earlier books.

Top 10 Overall

Rank Title Author Imprint Units
1 The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins Riverhead 37,617
2 Paper Towns John Green Penguin/Speak 26,381
3 I’ve Got You Under My Skin Mary Higgins Clark S&S/Pocket 25,112
4 American Sniper (movie tie-in) Chris Kyle Morrow 23,147
5 The Longest Ride (movie tie-in) Nicholas Sparks Grand Central 22,301
6 Dead Wake Erik Larson Crown 22,167
7 The Long Haul Jeff Kinney Abrams/Amulet 21,978
8 The Stranger Harlan Coben Dutton 21,122
9 The Shadows J.R. Ward NAL 19,735
10 The Story of Easter Pingry/Thornburgh Ideals/Candy Cane 18,599