SPRING PAPERBACK PREVIEW
Macmillan think Mendelson
is a rising star and plan a huge
campaign. My reader already
intends to read her next title.
Nic Sheff
Tweak
Pocket, £7.99, 4th,
9781847391629
This account
of crystal meth
addiction is
published at
the same time
as the hardback of Beautiful
Boy, which is his father David’s
take on it. A bit of daytime TV
coverage would see this shoot
up the bestseller lists.
Chip & Dan Heath
Made to Stick
Arrow, £7.99, 7th, 9780099505693
Subtitled “Why Some Ideas
Take Hold and Others Come
Unstuck”—this is great to dip
into and the best Freakonomics
wannabe I’ve seen.
Rupert
Thomson
Death of a
Murderer
Bloomsbury, £7.99, 4th,
9780747592679
This Costashortlisted
account of
a night spent guarding the
body of Myra Hindley is as
unsettlingly spectral as you
might suspect.
MARCH
GIANTS
Karin Slaughter
Skin Privilege
Arrow, £6.99, 27th, 9780099481843
Slaughter’s return to Grant
County and a distinctive
new look should mean that
the success of Triptych, with
300,000 sold, will be exceeded.
I’m content to take it on trust
that this is her goriest yet.
Harlan Coben
The Woods
Orion, £6.99, 6th,
9780752881904
Coben has picked
up a few tricks
from college pal
Dan Brown. His
standalone thrillers like this
one are almost as popular as
his Myron Bolitar series and
my Coben-loving reader wasn’t
disappointed.
Penny Vincenzi
An Absolute
Scandal
Review, £7.99, 20th,
9780755336807
Despite huge
sales, Vincenzi
hadn’t scored
a number one
until she moved from Orion.
Headline believes that her
second for them will repeat the
trick, with sales expected in
excess of 250,000 copies.
Marina Lewycka
Two Caravans
Penguin, £7.99, 6th, 9780141026992
With 40,000 sold in hardback
before the Christmas rush,
Lewycka has certainly avoided
difficult second-novel syndrome.
Lee Child
Bad Luck and
Trouble
Bantam, £6.99, 10th,
9780553818109
A hardback
number one with
sales up nearly
50% on The Hard
Way, and a simultaneous uplift
in backlist sales of 84%, Child’s
protaganist, Jack Reacher, is a
top brand name now.
Nicci French
Losing You
Penguin, £6.99, 6th,
9780141035413
Ten books
in, sales from
this husbandand-wife
duo
are still a
healthy 120,000, but Penguin
is planning a major retail
promotion to avoid losing
momentum in a market full of
promising newcomers.
Lloyd Jones
Mister Pip
John Murray, £7.99,
20th, 9780719569944
Despite not
winning the
Man Booker,
I’d expect this
wonderful
novel to outsell The Gathering
comfortably.
Clive Cussler & Jack du Brul
Dark Watch
Penguin, £6.99, 27th, 9780141021614
This is an Oregon Files title
rather than a Dirk Pitt, but
the Cussler brand is now a
guarantee of 150,000 sales
whatever the series.
www.thebookseller.com The Bookseller Spring Paperback Preview | 4 January 2008 15
Val McDermid
Beneath the
Bleeding
Harper, £6.99, 3rd,
9780007243280
The success of
ITV1’s “Wire
in the Blood”
series, with
Robson Green as Tony Hill, no
doubt contributed to hardback
sales of 40,000.
Anita Shreve
Body Surfing
Abacus, £6.99, 6th,
9780349119014
Little, Brown
has quietly
built Shreve
into a major
brand. Her last
title, A Wedding in December,
sold more than 200,000
in paperback. Authentic
characters but a little
predictable, my reader felt.
Barbara Taylor
Bradford
Heirs of Ravenscar
Harper, £6.99, 3rd,
9780007197644
A switch to Bformat
for the
follow-up to the
200,000-selling
The Ravenscar Dynasty.
BESTSELLERS
Jesse Kellerman
Trouble
Sphere, £6.99, 6th, 9780751540802
The author is the goriest of
the Kellerman crime-writing
dynasty and sold 55,000 of his
first title.
Martin Cruz
Smith
Stalin’s Ghost
Pan, £7.99, 7th,
9780330444934
The legacy of
Gorky Park
is a faithful
readership and
his last title, Wolves Eat Dogs,
sold 65,000 copies. He’s on
fine form and this is timely too
given Putin’s regime.
Peter Robinson
Friend of the Devil
Hodder, £6.99, 20th,
9780340836910
Hodder is
convinced that
Robinson is
the writer to
fill the Rebus
PRODUCT PREVIEW
void. I wonder if his fictional,
if atmospheric, setting is his
main obstacle, but sales of his
last, Piece of My Heart were 50%
higher than anything achieved
when he was published by Pan.
Rosie Thomas
Constance
Harper, £6.99, 3rd, 9780007173563
Thomas’ writing has evolved
to satisfy a changing market.
Her last, Iris & Ruby, was the
Romantic Novelist’s Association’s
novel of the year in 2007.
Donna Leon
Suffer The Little
Children
Arrow, £6.99, 6th,
9780099503224
A jacket tweak
for her latest
Commissario
Brunetti should
help Leon’s recent 15% to 20%
uplift in sales for each new title.
Gil McNeil
Divas Don’t Knit
Bloomsbury, £6.99, 3rd, 9780747593157
In a bid for the mass market,
this has been given an Adele
Parks-style cover. And with
knitting being the new yoga,
plus a £40,000 advertising
campaign of railway posters,
magazine ads and cards in
coffee shops, this could be big.
David & Stella Gemmell
Troy: Fall of Kings
Corgi, £6.99, 24th, 9780552151139
Although Gemmell died just
before completing this, his wife
has done a magnificent job of
finishing the third in the trilogy
using his notes. Sales of the
series were already double his
usual figures.
Paulo Coelho
The Witch of
Portobello
Harper, £7.99, 7th,
9780007251872
The public
appetite for him
remains unsated.
Hardback sales
were around 20,000 and the
paperback may reach six figures,
depending on how many price
promotions it features in.
Anne Enright
The Gathering
Vintage, £7.99, 6th, 9780099501633
Enright’s writing is sublime—it
reminded me of Graham
Swift—and there is more
humour than critics have said,
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