Also, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has recharted (last post on last page) this week thanks to the movie coming out soon.

Note that this is for the recent paperback that was released back in the summer, so its 165k YTD sales are just for that copy only.

That's something to watch for on these charts too. Every ISBN is considered unique, and many books can have multiple editions (hardcover, paperback, movie tie-ins, special editions, mass market, etc.) that count separately when sold and on the charts. This is why I include the release month and year of the book so it's easy to know which edition it is.

I've never tracked book sales linked to movie releases but think it would be a lot of fun to see trends before and after.

Similarly with the Eras tour sales, album sales and movie box office revenue. There are so many box office indicators that I'm not sure if tracking encompasses at all.

Crawdads for instance book sales and then movie box office. $90,230,760 was impressive.

It it interesting to watch book sales when a movie adaptation is on the horizon or already playing. Killers of the Flower Moon, released back in 2018 for example has been in the top 10 for a few weeks now after not doing much in its release year or the nearly 5 years since. Its print sales are going to exceed 500,000 this year alone, and across all formats (and taking Amazon Kindle into consideration though sales for Kindle aren't reported) will likely be over 1 million copies in its fifth year after release.

Where the Crawdads Sing "disappointed" at the box office relative to its book sales. It's the best selling book of the last ten years (since Fifty Shades and Hunger Games back in 2011/2012), with around 6 million print sales alone in the US/Canada and over 18 million worldwide (all formats) now.

The movie had good legs, but it was obviously more of a literary phenomenon than box office smash.

Iron Flame sold 500,000 copies in its first day (Nov. 7th) according to Variety, which gives it the second biggest first day of the year, and at least the third biggest first day in fiction since It Starts With Us last year and Midnight Sun back in 2020 (although its first day sales weren't reported).

This is certainly high enough to give it a first week at/above 1 million copies, but it's also no guarantee. The most hyped books don't normally double their first day sales, so I'd predict it'll be a little under but it's hard to really say. It's largely sold out in-store at all major retailers and it's on backorder at all of them online too. This scarcity can drive sales throughout the week, but not if there are no copies to be found. And physical copies being very hard to come by can drive eBook/Audiobook (and Kindle) sales, so... lots of different factors here that could suggest it'll hit 1 million for the week but also could fall short.

Whatever the case... this first day is extraordinary on its own, but it's even more so for a second book in a series that is only 6 months old. Not to mention that the Red Tower label also launched this past year under Entangled Publishing, so getting these sorts of first day/week numbers so early is very impressive.

Will update the first week total when it's released on Monday/Tuesday.

Fastest Selling Books - All Categories, All Formats (U.S./Canada):

8.3 million (24hrs) / 11.5 million (1st week) - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (J.K. Rowling, July 2007)
6.9 million (24hrs) / 9.6 million (1st week) - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J.K. Rowling, July 2005)
5.0 million (24hrs) / 6.8 million (1st week) - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (J.K. Rowling, June 2003)
3.0 million (48hrs) / 3.0 million (1st week) - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J.K. Rowling, July 2000)*
2.0 million (48hrs) / 3.3 million (1st week) - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts 1 & 2 (J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne, July 2016)
1.3 million (24hrs) / 1.3 million (1st week) - Breaking Dawn (Stephenie Meyer, Aug. 2008)**
1.03 million (24hrs) / 1.6 million (1st week) - Spare (Prince Harry, Jan. 2023)
950,000 (24hrs) / 1.35 million (1st week) - Too Much and Never Enough (Mary L. Trump, July 2020)
887,000 (24hrs) / 1.7 million (1st week) - A Promised Land (Barack Obama, Nov. 2020)
809,000 (24hrs) / 1.1 million (1st week) - It Starts With Us (Colleen Hoover, Oct. 2022)
750,000 (24hrs) / 1.15 million (1st week) - Fear (Bob Woodward, Sept. 2018)
725,000 (24hrs) / 1.4 million (1st week) - Becoming (Michelle Obama, Nov. 2018)
???,??? (24hrs) / 1.1 million (1st week) - Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee, July 2015)
???,??? (24hrs) / 1.05 million (1st week) - Midnight Sun (Stephenie Meyer, Aug. 2020)
550,000 (24hrs) / 550,000 (1st week) - Brisingr (Christopher Paolini, Sept. 2008)**
500,000 (24hrs) / TBA (1st week) - Iron Flame (Rebecca Yarros, Nov. 2023)
489,500 (24hrs) / 760,000 (1st week) - Inheritance (Christopher Paolini, Nov. 2011)
400,000 (24hrs) / 1.1 million (1st week) - The Woman in Me (Britney Spears, Oct. 2023)
400,000 (24hrs) / 1.0 million (1st week) - My Life (Bill Clinton, June 2004)
???,??? (24hrs) / 780,000 (1st week) - The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir (John Bolton, June 2020)
225,000 (24hrs) / 775,000 (1st week) - Decision Points (George W. Bush, Nov. 2010)
???,??? (24hrs) / 600,000 (1st week) - A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership (James B. Comey, Apr. 2018)
???,??? (24hrs) / 500,000 (1st week) - The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Suzanne Collins, May 2020)

*Vastly under-printed (despite it being a record at the time), selling ~95% of its first-print run in 48 hours.
**Only had one day of sales in its first week.

So that's why Target had so many empty bookshelves.

Does Black Friday affect book sales as much as games? Or maybe not since books aren't that expensive to begin with?

Well, in addition to Iron Flame (and a special edition of Fourth Wing that also released), there were dozens of notable new releases on the 7th as well. So yeah, I imagine Walmart and Target were fairly barebone since they don't normally get too many copies of books all at once like a B&N or BAM! does.

It's not so much Black Friday as it's just the holiday season that boosts book sales. There aren't really any Black Friday deals but you'll see retailers promote their usual biggest sales. Target had a Buy 2 Get 1 free this week that includes books too, which was great with so many notable books having just released. And B&N and BAM! typically have sales like 30-40% off the year's bestsellers and such. Walmart doesn't really do any sales for books because their normal prices are already close to what others will offer with sales.

All the below released on Nov. 7th.

We still don't have the all formats first week sales for 'Iron Flame', but the estimated print sales were just released and they're staggering. The second book in the Empyrean series sold 585,000 print copies in its first week, making it one of the biggest debuts of the last decade+.

And the limited holiday edition of the first book ('Fourth Wing') sold a very impressive 241,000 copies (most of these sold out already, so guessing 300,000 or so were made?) for second place. That makes it the biggest first week sales for a special edition on record (since 2012). Finally, sales of the regular 'Fourth Wing' book also nearly doubled this week to 53,000 and it's still in the top 10 after 28 weeks despite tons of new debuts this week, taking its total up to 810,000 since May.

'Iron Flame' first week (print sales) achievements (since charts began back in 2012):

-2nd Biggest First Week in Sci-Fi & Fantasy
-2nd Biggest First Week in Romance
-2nd Biggest First Week in Adult Fiction (18+)
-4th Biggest First Week in Fiction
-7th Biggest First Week in all categories.

In addition to this (which counts the US/Canada), it topped the charts in the U.K. (57,055 copies), which has been reported as the "Fastest Selling Book Ever In Adult Sci-Fi & Fantasy" there.

I'm going to assume it sold over 1 million across all formats in the US/Canada since it did 585,000 in print alone, but there was an incentive to buy print (the limited sprayed-edges copy that has sold out) that may have skewed sales. When its overall number is released (should be today), I'll update those charts, but in the meantime, here is the list of Biggest First Week in Print Sales Only.

Biggest First Week Print Sales (2012-Present):

2,619,285 - 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One & Two' (J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, John Tiffany, July 2016)
834,776 - 'A Promised Land' (Barack Obama, Nov. 2020)
809,355 - 'It Starts with Us' (Colleen Hoover, Oct. 2022)
761,140 - 'Go Set a Watchman' (Harper Lee, July 2015)
697,824 - 'Becoming' (Michelle Obama, Nov. 2018)
629,273 - 'Spare' (Prince Harry, Jan. 2023)
584,667 - 'Iron Flame' (Rebecca Yarros, Nov. 2023)
524,665 - 'Midnight Sun' (Stephenie Meyer, Aug. 2020)
417,947 - 'The Woman in Me' (Britney Spears, Oct. 2023)
387,347 - 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck' (Jeff Kinney, Nov. 2013)
380,610 - 'The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes' (Suzanne Collins, May 2020)
368,949 - 'Inferno' (Dan Brown, May 2013)
362,217 - 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel' (Jeff Kinney, Nov. 2012)
359,890 - 'A Higher Loyalty' (James B. Comey, Apr. 2018)
355,387 - 'The House of Hades' (Rick Riordan, Oct. 2013)
354,723 - 'Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian' (E.L. James, June 2015)
344,742 - 'Rage' (Bob Woodward, Sept. 2020)
343,120 - 'Fear' (Bob Woodward, Sept. 2018)
337,473 - 'Too Much and Never Enough' (Mary Trump, July 2020)
329,180 - 'American Marxism' (Mark R. Levin, July 2021)
322,068 - 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul' (Jeff Kinney, Nov. 2014)
315,282 - 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School' (Jeff Kinney, Nov. 2015)
312,616 - 'Dog Man: Fetch-22' (Dav Pilkey, Dec. 2019)
254,046 - 'No Easy Day' (Mark Owen, Kevin Maurer, Sept. 2012)
242,562 - 'Dog Man: For Whom the Ball Rolls' (Dav Pilkey, Aug. 2019)
240,715 - 'Fourth Wing' (Holiday Edition)' (Rebecca Yarros, Nov. 2023)
240,163 - 'The Mark of Athena' (Rick Riordan, Oct. 2012)
239,131 - 'Dog Man: Grime and Punishment' (Dav Pilkey, Sept. 2020)
238,731 - 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Double Down' (Jeff Kinney, Nov. 2016)
235,978 - 'Dog Man: Mothering Heights' (Dav Pilkey, Mar. 2021)
231,702 - 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway' (Jeff Kinney, Nov. 2017)
230,764 - 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Meltdown' (Jeff Kinney, Oct. 2018)
228,473 - 'Allegiant' (Veronica Roth, Oct. 2013)
225,612 - 'Dog Man: Twenty Thousand Fleas Under the Sea' (Dav Pilkey, Mar. 2023)
221,341 - 'The Room Where It All Happened' (John Bolton, June 2020)
215,635 - 'Whose Boat Is This Boat?' (Staff of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Nov. 2018)
214,667 - 'The Hill We Climb' (Amanda Gorman, Mar. 2021)
211,354 - 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Big Shot' (Jeff Kinney, Oct. 2021)

Wow, those are some massive #'s. Thanks for sharing. It isn't even Black Friday yet either.

Very impressive!!

Amazon series feels like wasting it tbh, then again tv route worked for Game of Thrones, but HBO > Amazon.

I'd prefer HBO too.

What I find most interesting is just how fast it's taken off. The first book was released just 6 months ago, and it didn't have a particularly impressive debut. It sold 33,198 copies in its first week, which is certainly a good number for a first entry in a series by a relatively unknown author, but it has since been pretty dominate on the charts and besides a four week period in the summer when stores were waiting for the publisher to ship more copies, sales each week haven't dipped much below that ~30k mark all year.

And now, six months later, the sequel puts up a monster debut like this which is pretty much unprecedented in such a short amount of time.

In the TikTok age, it's much easier for books to find success very early in their lives and to grow quickly from reaching a wide audience versus what could to take a number of years in the past. People can discuss and share vids of books together instantaneously. So that explains how it happened so fast, but the scale is very high here.

But why this series? We know that romance books with more adult sex scenes can reach a lot of people (women, primarily) when looking at the success of Fifty Shades, A Court of Thornes and Roses, and more recently Colleen Hoover's many novels. And most books that take off on TikTok are romance novels.

Dragons have been big in pop culture (Got/HotD, HTTYD, games like Skyrim, etc.) for most of the last decade, and it checks that box too. And it's a little more violent than what you'd usually see in YA books/movies.

So it's gotten the attention of female readers who prefer the romance in their books to have more "spice" than YA allows, and the fantasy/action aspects that could appeal to guys who decide to check it out on their own or because their girlfriends/wives ask them to. And while it's for 18+ readers, I don't think it's so "adult" that older teens (16/17) who like YA can't find appeal here too. It also helps that the first book is good (haven't read the second yet). I'd give it a B+/A-, and user reviews across the internet are strong (4.5+/5) too. If a book sucked, I don't think the content within it can sell it in the long-term.

Interested to see how the Amazon series does. The book(s) does seem to have a little something that can appeal to many groups of readers, so it could be one to watch in 2025 (presumably?).

Any series is a waste to be honest. We need box office hits and this is the exact type of new franchise that this generation of movie fans would go for.

That's something too. Streaming platforms winning the rights to this book series (or any book series) and adapting them as TV shows. They've been getting them quite early after release too.

Maybe film studios need to be more on this moving forward.

Oh, and Iron Flame sold 584,667 print copies (edited above), up nearly 30k from the estimate from earlier! This doesn't usually happen, so I assume the 555,000 was just a typo. STILL no sales for all formats released yet, but the increase here further suggests it's above 1 million. I'd think they'd have already announced this if it was though since it's a big deal, but maybe they're just late or they don't have the full figure yet.

I'll share the weekly top 25 tomorrow. It was the biggest week of the year in sales. Many debuts and more recent titles holding well (many even/up vs last week) as the holidays approach.

Wow, as the box office has tanked for much of the fall the book charts are so much more interesting! Why has it taken me so long to follow these?

Do you have much inkling in your industry what the top 2024 books are going to be?

Dogman: The Chase Catsby?

I looked it up and its actually called The Scarlet Shedder. That's way better than mine.

Dog Man does have some great titles. And yes, they sell well, each new book selling a bit over one million every year. If nothing really big releases or breaks out, they have potential to top the year (like in 2021). Diary of a Wimpy Kid is always a reliable 750,000-1 million seller too.

I don't know of anything else that say... has 1 million+ potential next year yet, but book release dates aren't normally announced too far out. The release schedule doesn't go past April right now for example. Emily Henry's 'Funny Story' might be the biggest early 2024 release I see at the moment just based on her success in the past.

Hannah Grace's third book in her Maple Hills series is coming out next June, I think, and given 'Icebreaker' is one of the biggest books of the year and 'Wildfire' has been doing well since its release last month, then it'll also do well.

Prince Harry signed a book deal that included three books, if I recall, so if he releases the second one next year it'll do well. Not nearly as well as 'Spare', but just half of its numbers would be great still.

And it doesn't have a release date or title or anything yet, but the third book in the Empyrean series will presumably be very big if it releases next year given the success of Fourth Wing and Iron Flame this year.

There's always the "chance" that 'Winds of Winter' (GRRM) is released, but I think the window for it to do blockbuster sales have since passed. If it had released the same year as Season 8 or the year after, it probably would have been a major event. But now? I think it will still do very well, but now only the biggest fans are likely to get it versus the casual masses I feel. Probably plenty of fans to move well over a million physical copies and be a multi-million seller no problem, but this could have been something really, really big five years ago.

I think Winds of Winter would deliver the mega sales but of course we know hell will freeze over before he finishes it...

PW's Weekly Top 25 [85% of Print Market] (Nov. 7-13, 2023):

TW (LW) [Weeks on List] Print Sales (YTD Sales) - Title (Author)
01 (---) [1] 584,667 (New) - "Iron Flame" (Rebecca Yarros, Nov. 2023)
02 (---) [1] 240,715 (New) - "Fourth Wing" (Holiday Edition) (Rebecca Yarros, Nov. 2023)
03 (01) [3] 81,688 (633,216) - "The Woman in Me" (Britney Spears, Oct. 2023)
04 (---) [1] 73,870 (New) - "Murtagh: The World of Eragon" (Christopher Paolini, Nov. 2023)
05 (02) [3] 72,680 (304,555) - "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: No Brainer" (Jeff Kinney, Oct. 2023)
06 (---) [1] 55,322 (New) - "My Name is Barbra" (Barbra Streisand, Nov. 2023)
07 (06) [28] 53,656 (811,347) - "Fourth Wing" (Rebecca Yarros, May 2023)
08 (---) [1] 42,649 (New) - "Resurrection Walk" (Michael Connelly, Nov. 2023)
09 (04) [5] 32,295 (229,121) - "The Exchange: After the Firm" (John Grisham, Oct. 2023)
10 (---) [1] 30,599 (New) - "The Bad Guys" (Aaron Blabey, Nov. 2023)
11 (---) [1] 27,213 (New) - "Check & Mate" (Ali Hazelwood, Nov. 2023)
12 (---) [1] 26,280 (New) - "Bookshops & Bonedust" (Travis Baldree, Nov. 2023)
13 (---) [1] 22,560 (New) - "The Big Cheese" (Jory John, Pete Oswald, Nov. 2023)
14 (NA) [6] 22,078 (58,814) - "How to Catch a Turkey" (Adam Wallace, Andy Elkerton, Sept. 2018)
15 (16) [15] 22,062 (187,592) - "The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes (A Hunger Games Novel)" (Suzanne Collins, Aug. 2023)
16 (---) [1] 22,022 (New) - "Nightbane (the Lightlark Saga)" (Alex Aster, Nov. 2023)
17 (14) [28] 21,335 (429,120) - "Taylor Swift: A Little Golden Book Biography" (Wendy Loggia, Elisa Chavarri, May 2023)
18 (22) [2] 21,090 (45,594) - "You're My Little Christmas Cookie" (Nicola Edwards, Natalie Marshall, Oct. 2021)
19 (---) [1] 20,344 (New) - "The Beatles: A Little Golden Book Biography" (Judy Katschke, Maike Plenzke, Nov. 2023)
20 (13) [6] 19,230 (97,533) - "The Great Disappearance: 31 Ways to Be Rapture Ready" (David Jeremiah, Oct. 2023)
21 (15) [7] 19,055 (237,916) - "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Chalice of the Gods" (Rick Riordan, Sept. 2023)
22 (03) [2] 18,879 (64,949) - "Dirty Thirty" (Janet Evanovich, Oct. 2023)
23 (---) [1] 18,838 (New) - "Love Redesigned" (Lauren Asher, Nov. 2023)
24 (21) [4] 17,978 (94,234) - "Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism" (Rachel Maddow, Oct. 2023)
25 (17) [40] 17,918 (622,729) - "Icebreaker" (Hannah Grace, Feb. 2023)

This week was promoted as the biggest week of the year for books with 'Iron Flame' and a ton of other notable debuts, and thankfully it delivered with the biggest sales week of 2023!

The week was up 3.9% versus last year, closing the gap with 2022 to 3.5% as the Fall weeks continue to deliver strong results (5 of the last 7 weeks have outsold 2022).

So far, 2023 has seen 15,683,000 print books sold led by Adult Nonfiction (5.156m), then Adult Fiction (4.213m), Juvenile Fiction (3.950m), Juvenile Nonfiction (1.196m), Young Adult Fiction (721,000), and finally Young Adult Nonfiction (83,000).

*****

Massive debut for 'Iron Flame' (second book in the Empyrean series) as discussed above. 'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' is the only book in sci-fi or fantasy keeping it from the biggest debut in those genres since these charts began in 2012, and including every category it's the seventh biggest debut since the sales charts began (2012-).

And the holiday edition of 'Fourth Wing' (first book in he Empyrean series) delivered a very impressive debut of its own, and judging by how it's sold out everywhere online and scarcely available anywhere in stores now, I'm guessing it sold the vast majority of its print run (my guess would be 300,000 or a little more. The original released back in May has already exceeded 800,000 and remains in the Top 10 in its 28th week of release too.

'The Woman in Me' had a decent third week, and so long as the next few weeks can hold steady, it will probably end up selling over 1 million print copies.

'Murtagh' had a good debut moving almost 75,000 copies. This is quite good for a spin-off standalone novel in the The Inheritance (Eragon) series. This series has always sold pretty well, but seems to fly under the radar with many, I feel. The movie disappointing back in 2006 could have contributed to it not really taking off though (to household status), so curious to see what the upcoming TV series can bring new fans to the books.

'My Name is Barbra' came in a bit lower than I was expecting. Usually memoirs of what I'd consider A-listers average closer to 75,000-100,000 in their first week. Not a bad debut though, and since the holidays are about to begin, it can certainly have a strong upcoming 4-6 weeks. Interesting to note her memoir is over 1,000 pages and has an MSRP of $45. Both of these could have had an impact on the first week sales as it's both very long and pricey.

Any updates here?