‘Fire And Fury’ Sets Sales Record For Publisher Holt: 1.4M Hardcover On Order
Anyone watching cable news the last week won’t be surprised by book sales figures just released for ..
Anyone watching cable news the last week won’t be surprised by book sales figures just released for Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. According to publisher Henry Holt, the company has 1.4 million hardcover books on order and will have shipped more than 700,000 copies to date.
The Macmillan imprint says the figure sets a new record for the publisher, and “an historic rate of sales velocity driven by consumer demand for books across all formats.”
Fire and Fury will debut on The New York Times Best Sellers list January 21 as the No. 1 nonfiction title, based on only two days of sales since its January 5 release, and will be the No. 1 title on the Combined Print and E-Book list, according to Holt.
The figures were announced today by Stephen Rubin, Holt’s president and publisher. The publisher says the book is already in its eleventh printing in less than one week of publication, with more printings scheduled.
Publicity surrounding the book’s release has been non-stop all month, boosted along by a cease-and-desist order from President Donald Trump’s lawyers. Holt promptly moved up the publication date from January 9 to January 5, with author Wolff tweeting at the time: “Thank you, Mr. President.”
After the publication, Holt called any attempt to interfere with the publication “flagrantly unconstitutional,” with Macmillan Publishers CEO John Sargent telling employees, “We will not allow any president to achieve by intimidation what our Constitution precludes.”
Today, in announcing the latest sales figures, Don Weisberg, president of Macmillan Publishers, said, “The magnitude of demand for ‘Fire and Fury’ was so unprecedented that we felt the only thing to do was break from our planned publication date, which Macmillan has never done in our memory, and make this book available as soon as possible to accounts and readers.”
Holt president Rubin acquired the book from Andrew Wylie, and negotiated for rights to North America. The Wylie Agency, LLC, in New York and London, holds the foreign rights.
