Press Release: Booksellers NZ
Lloyd Jones’ book Mister Pip, by Penguin Books, has topped the Best of the Bestsellers list beating international and national titles to be the overall number one bestseller in the Booksellers New Zealand Best of the Bestsellers List for 2007.
This year’s bestselling books were:
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (Penguin Books) took the top spot for New Zealand Fiction
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (Penguin/Viking) International Fiction
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (Simon and Schuster) International Non-fiction
Eldest by Christopher Paolini (Corgi) Children and Teens
and once again the iconic Edmonds Cookery Book (Hachette Livre New Zealand) takes top honours for New Zealand Non-fiction.
More than 46,000 titles of Mister Pip have now been sold in New Zealand. Another 25,000 copies have been sold in Australia and the book was now available in 30 countries worldwide. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom had all bought rights to two of Lloyd Jones’ other books the Book of Fame and Here at the End of the World we Learn to Dance. A film based on Mister Pip was also looking very likely with negotiations well advanced.”This is absolutely extraordinary. There has never been anything quite like it before,” Mr Walker said.
The adult Bestsellers Lists are compiled fortnightly by Booksellers New Zealand, and a Bestsellers List for Children Teenagers is produced monthly. Sales figures are collected in specific categories New Zealand Fiction, New Zealand Non-fiction, International Fiction, International Non-fiction, and Children & Teens. These figures identify the books which are being bought in the greatest numbers for the given period. At the end of each year the total number of appearances of each title is tallied to establish which books have proven most consistently popular with New Zealand’s book-buying public.
14 December 2007 at 10:09 am
Best-selling, but not always most loved. If only people could take back at book to the store when they didn’t enjoy it and get their money back, that would be a decent measure of what was actually a decent read.
I am going to put it out there that I really didn’t enjoy The Memorykeeper’s Daughter. While I thought the premise was interesting enough to buy a copy, however in reading it, I found that the story and the plot just dragged for me (although admittedly I did finish it, which is unusual for me, as I have reached a point where I will actually give up on a book if it doesn’t work for me). Alas, I haven’t met anyone else who didn’t enjoy it. Am I the only one?
Getting a feel for what is popular because it has sold copious amounts of copies versus what is actually a favourite read is always a fascinating debate.
Most of my truly favourite reads never seem to end up on any lists … apart from my own!
14 December 2007 at 8:08 pm
I confess I couldn’t make it through Mister Pip … If I don’t get absorbed in a story in the first 50 or so pages I’ll cut my losses and move on. I’m not sure why it didn’t work for me. It was feeling a bit preachy or didactic, but maybe that was just at the start??