‘Fire and Fury’ sales top 29,000 in first weekend

“Fire and Fury” seemed to catch everyone off guard, from the Trump administration to publisher Henry Holt and Co., which has raised an initial announced printing of 150,000 to more than 1 million. Since reports of the book’s contents emerged a week ago, retailers have struggled to keep up, with Amazon.com warning of delays of two to four weeks for delivery. BookScan, which tracks about 85 per cent of the retail market, only counts an order as a sale once the book has been shipped.

The BookScan numbers also don’t include e-books. According to John Sargent, CEO of Holt parent company Macmillan, digital sales already top 250,000 copies, an extraordinary number for a nonfiction release and likely boosted by the scarcity of the hardcover edition. Audio sales exceed 100,000.

Clinton’s book, about her stunning presidential election loss in 2016 to Trump, had one of the biggest first weeks in recent history for a nonfiction book. It sold more than 300,000 copies in the combined formats of hardcover, e-book and audio, Simon & Schuster announced at the time. The debut for “Fire and Fury,” with its stories of a chaotic White House, is approaching 400,000. “Fire and Fury” will appear at No. 1 on The New York Times’ hardcover nonfiction list in the edition that runs on Jan. 21.

“Fire and Fury” was supposed to come out Tuesday but Holt moved up the release in respond to popular demand and to threats of legal action by Trump, who has denounced the book as fiction. An attorney for the president last week sent a cease-and-desist letter to Holt, asking for publication to be withheld. Sargent has issued a company memo defending the decision to publish “Fire and Fury” and a Macmillan attorney on Tuesday said the publisher planned no retraction or apology.

Hillel Italie, The Associated Press

by Canadian Press

‘Fire and Fury’ sales top 29,000 in first weekend

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