10 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019
Nickel
and Climb
On a Role
In the Limelight
Colson Whitehead has the #4 book
in the country with The Nickel
Boys, which our starred review
called “a stunning novel of impecca-
ble language and startling insight.”
It follows the author’s Pulitzer
Prize– and National Book Award–
winning The Underground Railroad, and first-week print unit sales, already on an
upward trajectory, are more than double what they were for that title. Debuting at #1 in trade paperback
and the #3 book in the country,
The Adventure Zone: Murder
on the Rockport Limited! is the
second graphic
novel based on the
McElroy family’s
role-playing
podcast. The first
Adventure Zone
title, Here There Be
Gerblins, pubbed a
year ago with simi-
lar stats: #1 trade paper, #3 overall.
The difference: the first book was
trade paper only, whereas the new
one is a simultaneous hardcover/trade
paper release; the hardcover is #
on that list. Gerblins sold 38K its first
week; Rockport Limited sold 41K
in trade paper and another 7,500 in
hardcover.Geddy Lee’s Big Beautiful Book of
Bass pubbed in December, had a nice
debut week, and then sales quickly fell
off. Lee, front man for Canadian prog
rock band Rush, had done a few one-off
book tour dates, and then in the second
week of July had a seven-day run in the
South, Midwest, and on the East Coast.
The ticketed events each sold out several
hundred cop-
ies, and the
book lands at
#8 in hard-
cover nonfic-
tion with its
best weekly
sales to date.TOP 10 OVERALL
1 The New Girl Daniel Silva Harper 59,
2 Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens Putnam 48,
3 The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited! McElroy/Pietsch First Second 40,
4 The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead Doubleday 39,
5 Educated Tara Westover Random House 19,
6 Under Currents Nora Roberts St. Martin’s 19,
7 Window on the Bay Debbie Macomber Ballantine 17,
8 Unfreedom of the Press Mark R. Levin Threshold 16,
9 The Reckoning John Grisham Dell 16,
10 Before We Were Yours Lisa Wingate Ballantine 14,RANK TITLE AUTHOR IMPRINT UNITSINFORMATION SUPPLIED BY NPD BOOKSCAN. COPYRIGHT © 2019 THE NPD GROUP. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.BY CAROLYN JURIS
Behind the Bestsellers JULY 14–20, 2019
NEW & NOTABLE
THE NEW GIRL
Daniel Silva
#1 Hardcover Fiction,
#1 overall
The 19th Gabriel Allon thriller
is “an excellent introduction
for new readers,” our review
said, with “sharply drawn
characters, a complex plot, and vivid back-
grounds that add to the book’s realism.”AMERICAN CARNAGE
Tim Alberta
#2 Hardcover Nonfiction
Interviews with President
Trump, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz,
and many others inform what
our starred review called a
“sweeping study of modern
American politics” by the chief political
correspondent for Politico, in which “Repub-
lican congressional factions battle each
other and Donald Trump for the party’s soul.”THEY CALLED US
ENEMY
George Takei et al.
#11 Trade Paperback
“Takei challenges Americans
to look to how past humani-
tarian injustices speak to
current political debates,”
our starred review said, in this graphic
novel recounting his family’s internment
during WWII.
ALL PRINT UNIT SALES PER NPD BOOKSCAN EXCEPT WHERE NOTED505
Recent First-Week Print Unit Sales
for Colson Whitehead2006 2009 2011 2016 201 92,286 4,
17,
39,