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Cursed Child sells 2.6m through BookScan US
J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Arthur A Levine) sold nearly 2.6m print units in its first week through BookScan US, the third-biggest single week total for a book since accurate records began.
The 2,555,271 unit sale for …Cursed Child is the biggest seven-day haul since Rowling’s last Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' 5,088,184 copies in July 2007.
Rowling and Jack Thorne’s playscript boosted the rest of the boy wizard's franchise, with nine Potter-related titles in the USA top 100 last week, all moving up the charts. The original trade paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (the American name for …The Philosopher’s Stone) cracked the top 10, selling 19,959 units, while Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (10,404 units) was 30th, the new Jim Kay-illustrated edition of …Sorcerer’s Stone (9,706) in 38th and The Harry Potter Colouring Book (9,506) in 39th.
Six of the top seven Children’s titles last week were authored by Rowling, with only Ransom Riggs’ Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Quirk) breaking the Potter stranglehold, selling 15,460 copies for third place.
Arthur A Levine parent group Scholastic also announced yesterday that the book has sold 3.3m units across North America, which would include “off BookScan” markets in the US, plus sales in Canada.
The last two Potter novels, the Deathly Hallows and The Half-Blood Prince, remain the only books in BookScan US history to sell over a million units in consecutive weeks. After Deathly Hallows shifted just over 5m copies in its first week in 2007, it sold 1,642,588 in the following seven-day period.
The Half-Blood Prince sold 4,047,700 copies in its first week on sale in 2005, and 1,686,628 in its second week. It should be noted that BookScan US bestseller list stretch back to January 2004, so would not include figures for the …the Order of the Phoenix.
The only non-Rowling book to sell over over a million copies in its debut week since the Deathly Hallows is Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol (Doubleday) in September 2009, which shifted 1,156,366 units.
With Rowling leading the way, 14.6m books were sold through BookScan US last week, a huge 27% jump on the previous week, with the Children’s market rocketing 72% up to 6.5m units shifted.
