Bestseller Thursday — Which Movies Make Books?
Hollywood has fallen in love with books again (as the most fickle lover there is, expect a quick reversal). This week’s USA Today’s “Book Buzz” column notes that with seven movie-related titles in the top 50, their bestseller list “resembles a box-office report.” But, significantly, the books rank in a different order than the movies. This leads to the age-old publishing question — when does a movie affect book sales? Atonement, at #7, is way ahead of No Country for Old Men (at #79), even though they are both in limited release. What makes the difference? Perhaps it’s the heavy promotional messages on NPR for Atonement, with reference to it being a”romance”?
USA Today’s list reflects sales through the prior Sunday (Dec. 23rd), so it doesn’t take into account several important book-related movies that opened on Christmas Day. To see how these movies are affecting books, we have to look to Amazon’s rankings, updated hourly. Charlie Wilson’s War is doing well, fitting my own theory that when a movie presents a fascinating character, people want to learn more about him.
The stunner is that Oil! is getting a bump. The movie title is different from the book (There Will be Blood), making it less identifiable with the movie and the book, by Upton Sinclair, is hardly a recent title. The graphic novel Persepolis also is surfacing. More details on those and a look at a movie to hit next month, below:
Charlie Wilson’s War by George Crile
Movie directed by Mike Nichols
Starring: Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks.
The Amazon rank for hardcover has been ranging from #35 to #43. Oddly, the trade paperback tie-in edition is doing less well, at around #533 (perhaps because the hardcover is priced very close to the trade paperback tie-in).
Hardcover:
- Publisher: Grove Press (April 22, 2004)
- ISBN-10: 0802141242
- ISBN-13: 978-0802141248
Paperback tie-in
- Publisher: Grove Press; Reissue edition (November 6, 2007)
- ISBN-10: 0802143415
- ISBN-13: 978-0802143419
There Will Be Blood
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis
Based on: OIL! by Upton Sinclair.
Amazon ranking: around #650
- Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (December 18, 2007)
- ISBN-10: 0143112260
- ISBN-13: 978-0143112266
- Amazon.com Sales Rank: #636
Persepolis
Starring: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve
Directors: Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
There’s several formats of the graphic novel available, listed in order of their Amazon rankings:
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (Paperback)
Amazon — around #450
- Publisher: Pantheon (June 1, 2004)
- ISBN-10: 037571457X
- ISBN-13: 978-0375714573
The Complete Persepolis: Now a Major Motion Picture (tie-in paperback ed.)
Amazon — around #1,500
- Publisher: Pantheon (October 30, 2007)
- ISBN-10: 0375714839
- ISBN-13: 978-0375714832
Persepolis Boxed Set (Paperback)
Amazon — around #4,500
- Publisher: Pantheon (October 25, 2005)
- ISBN-10: 0375423966
- ISBN-13: 978-0375423963
Looking further ahead, buzz is building for Beaufort, set to open in the US next month. The L.A. Times reviewed the book this week, calling it “that rare thing, a novel of deep moral concern in which sympathetically drawn and beautifully realized characters are allowed to speak for themselves.” Originally published in Isreal, it was on the bestseller list there for 18 months. Currently, it is ranking around 7,000 on Amazon.
- Hardcover: 368 pages
- Publisher: Delacorte Press (December 26, 2007)
- ISBN-10: 0553806823
- ISBN-13: 978-055380682
