Retail wars begin as Pullman shoots to number one in pre-orders

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From The Bookseller:

Less than 24 hours after the announcement that Philip Pullman is to release a new epic fantasy series entitled The Book of Dust, the first volume has shot to number one in Amazon’s bestseller charts through pre-order sales.

Retail wars have already commenced with both Amazon and Waterstones offering the first instalment, due out on 19th October, with a 50% discount off the £20 book. Independent booksellers meanwhile have vowed to think “creatively” about how best to secure a share of the sales. Waterstones m.d James Daunt has said the first book could be worth around £8m in sales to the chain alone – 2% of its overall revenue.

Zool Verjee, deputy manager of Blackwell’s Oxford, said the store is planning something “stupendous” to mark the publication of the book. Pullman lives in Oxford and is well-known in the bookshop. “Everyone in this shop is floating”, he said. “It is fantastic, we know him really well and he’s done a number of events with us. This news has got us thinking of how to make people aware. We’ll have our own ‘Philip Pullman campaign’. We want to pull out all the stops and do something stupendous.”

Link to the rest at The Bookseller

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9 thoughts on “Retail wars begin as Pullman shoots to number one in pre-orders”

  2. One-click purchase. Done. And now it’ll show up as a pleasant surprise on my Kindle in October, when I’ll have forgotten about it.

    I’ll read anything he sets in that world and ask for more.

    Thanks for the heads-up, PG—amidst all the business talk, it’s a lot of fun to drop into pure fan-boy book-lovin’ mode.

  4. That title would be the kiss of death for an indie publisher, but good for Pullman, for getting up there where he can use a weird title!

  6. Eight months away? I wonder how many of those pre-orders will be saying “I don’t remember ordering this.” by the time it finally gets to them. (on the other hand, if this was a ‘rig the best seller’ test, they can now cancel all those pre-orders as they’ve made the list.)

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