PublishersLunchVintage's editions of EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy sold 19.4 million units in the US through July 2, and 31 million units in English around the world. US sales remain almost equally split between trade paperbacks (9.8 million copies) and ebooks (9.6 million units), the WSJ writes in an advance look at Vintage's press release. Those sales comprise approximately $145 million for Vintage--but also closer to $225 million for Random House, which licensed world English rights. James' books, reissued four months ago, have comprised as much as 20 percent of all print adult fiction sales in the US (based on outlets monitored by Nielsen BookScan).
As readers know, interest in Fifty Shades has lifted sales of erotica in general. The latest beneficiary of note is Anne Rice: her Sleeping Beauty trilogy from the 80s, originally published under the pen name A.N. Roquelaure, is being rereleased by Plume on Thursday. The new editions will carry Rice's name, alongwith the tagline "writing as A. N. Roquelaure." This time it's the NYTthat gets the press release first. Plume says they are printing 350,000 copies of the new editions. A spokesperson for the publisher indicates sales in the first six months of 2012 "were twice those throughout all of 2011." (Nielsen BookScan figures show 2011 as the lightest sales year ever for the series, though, since Nielsen started tracking US sales--and print sales this year are in the four-digits for each title.)
WSJ
PublishersLunch