Publishers Weekly – July 29, 2019

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‘Crawdads’ Tops One Million Print Sales

Feature: Self-Help Books

Issue: Oct. 14 Deadline: Aug. 14

Needed: Information on trends in the self-help category.

Pub. dates: October 2019 through summer 2020. New releases only,

please; no reprints. Please email pitches to features@publishersweekly.

com by August 14 and put “Call for Info: Self-Help” in the subject line.

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New

England

7% Middle

Atlantic

11%

East North

Central

13%

West

North

Central

8%

East South

Central

6%

West

South

Central 9%

Mountain

8%

Pacific

14%

South

Atlantic

24%

D

elia Owens’s Where the

Crawdads Sing surpassed

one million print copies

sold in 2019, making it the feel-

good publishing story of the year.

The debut novel, preempted by

Putnam’s Tara Singh Carlson in

December 2017 and published by

the Penguin Random House

imprint in August 2018, is the rare

adult fiction novel to sell more

than one million print copies in a

year. In 2018, for instance, the

top-selling adult novel was The

President Is Missing by James

Patterson and Bill Clinton, which

sold more than 703,000 print

units at outlets that report to NPD

BookScan. In 2017, Origin by Dan Brown sold more print

copies (almost 747,000) than any other adult novel. The

success of Crawdads is also notable because it was written

by a debut author, not a big name such as Patterson or Brown.

Crawdads, which is set in 1950s North Carolina and melds

a coming-of-age tale with a romance and a mystery, got off to

a respectable start. After its August 2018 release, it sold

186,000 print copies through December 30 of last year. The

book really took off, though, in the week ended March 23,

when it sold more than 75,000 copies. Since that time, print

sales have ranged from about 38,000 to 49,000 copies per

week (it sold 49,000 copies in the week ended July 20). Since

the beginning of this year, Crawdads has been the #1 overall

print bestseller on BookScan for eight weeks and the #1 adult

fiction title for 22 weeks.

So what made the novel click? Popular wisdom has credited

much of Crawdads’ success to Reese Witherspoon’s Book

Club, which selected the title as its September 2018 pick.

From there, strong word-of-mouth has helped push the book,

which has been celebrated for its lush descriptions of the

natural world, into the sales stratosphere. (Sources close to

the publisher have also noted that,

though print sales for the title are

huge, e-book and audio sales,

which BookScan does not track,

are even bigger.)

Given Crawdads’ setting, it’s not

surprising that it has performed

particularly well in the South,

which has accounted for 39% of

its print sales this year. The book

has done the best in what

BookScan calls the South Atlantic

region (Delaware; Florida;

Georgia; Maryland; North

Carolina; South Carolina; Virginia;

Washington, D.C.; and West

Virginia), which accounted for 24%

of the novel’s print sales this year.

Angel Schroeder, owner of Sunrise Books in High Point, N.C.,

said she had initially been cool to the title, based on its syn-

opsis. But once she read it, she said, she loved it. “The strong

female protagonist is very well drawn, she’s not an angel,

which makes the book interesting,” she added.

Crawdads has been one of the bestselling titles at Sunrise

since it opened in 2016, Schroeder said, and it remains a

steady seller. “I have a customer who keeps coming in and

buying it to give away as gifts,” she noted. “It’s one of the $

hardcovers that’s really worth the money.” She predicted that

the store will do very well with the paperback edition whenever

it is released. —Jim Milliot and Rachel Deahl

‘Where the Crawdads Sing’

Sales by Region

SOURCE: NPD BOOKSCAN

noted, he means that he will experiment with a variety of

models, and Clover will be a direct-to-consumer venture,

using crowdsourcing and direct sales to build an audience.

Panelist Liz Frances, a former book designer and founder

of Street Noise Books, is working with new artists to develop

graphic nonfiction and #OwnVoices memoirs from artists

who are from marginalized communities, such as people of

color and LGBTQ artists.

Panelists Sebastian Girner of TKO Studios and Stuart

continued on p. 8