(UPDATED) “The Casual Vacancy” Fastest-selling Novel in Three Years in UK

Oct 01, 2012

Posted by: Catherine

News

J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy is the fastest-selling novel to hit the UK book market in three years. According to The BookSeller, Little,Brown shipped out over one million copies of the physical book to fill pre-orders in UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa. This number, shy of the estimated 2.5 million pre-orders, does not include digital copies of The Casual Vacancy that were sold. The BookSeller reports:

A statement from the publisher said: “We are delighted by the first day sales of The Casual Vacancy, which make it the fastest-selling book in the UK in three years . . . We will have official weekly sales figures from BookScan next Tuesday.”

The record for first-week sales for an adult hardback fiction title is currently held by Dan Brown for The Lost Symbol (Transworld), which sold 550,000 copies in its first week on sale in 2009.

Meanwhile, Waterstones spokesperson Fiona Allen said: “[The Casual Vacancy] definitely was the biggest seller of the day and it was a very good day for us. In fact, I think sales might actually have been bigger than Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol, certainly at 2.30pm it looked like it was heading for it and may well have taken over by the end of the day. We had a constant stream of people coming in to pick it up.”

Stay close to Leaky for more sales statistics coming soon!

UPDATED: We now have some numbers and figures to match up with this article. The Casual Vacancy sold 124,603 physical copies through out the U.K. in its first week of release. This is the fastest selling adult novel since 2009, when Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol sold 550,00 copies. The Hollywood Reporter states:

LONDON – J.K. Rowling‘s The Casual Vacancy sold 124,603 copies in the U.K. in its first week to take the top spot on the country’s fiction chart.

The first adult novel from the Harry Potter author sold 10 times more copies thanBernard Cornwell‘s second-ranked 1356, which sold 12,231, according to data from Nielsen Book Scan.





The Leaky Cauldron is not associated with J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., or any of the individuals or companies associated with producing and publishing Harry Potter books and films.