Bestseller Stat Shot

Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Reagan (Holt), the latest entry in his series of pop histories cowritten with Martin Dugard, was far and away the top-selling book in the country last week, moving 112K print units. And while most authors would kill for that kind of sales, the book’s print performance is a comedown for the series, making this the slowest start since the series’s initial installment, 2011’s Killing Lincoln. Here’s debut week print-unit sales for each book in the series.

From the Newsletters

Tip Sheet
Gavin McCrea talks about mixing fact and fiction in his new historical novel, Mrs. Engels (Catapult).

Children’s Bookshelf
How Ted Dawe landed a U.S. publishing deal for Into the River (Polis), a young adult novel banned in Dawe’s native New Zealand.

BookLife Report
Jane Friedman on what self-published authors need to know to get their books into libraries.

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The most-read review on publishersweekly.com last week was The Revenant by Michael Punke (Carroll & Graf).

Podcasts

Week Ahead
PW senior writer Andrew Albanese breaks down a proposal by the U.S. Copyright Office regarding orphan works.

More to Come
Mad magazine editor John Ficarra explains how the “usual gang of idiots” has been skewering culture and politics for nearly 60 years.

KidsCast
Victoria Forester on her book The Boy Who Knew Everything (Feiwel & Friends), which continues the adventures of the superpowered children from The Girl Who Could Fly.

Events

Publishers Weekly and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair present Global Kids Connect, a one-of-a-kind event about the best strategies for engaging audiences on a global scale. Register today and mark your calendars for December 2.

PW Radio

David Peterson, author of The Art of Language Invention (Penguin), explains how languages such as Dothraki are created. PW senior writer Andrew Albanese previews the Frankfurt Book Fair.