Mister Pip Makes Record Sales in NZ and Overseas

Best of the Bestsellers
Press Release
6 December 2007
for immediate release

PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mister Pip Makes Record Sales in New Zealand and Overseas

Lloyd Jones’ book Mister Pip, by Penguin Books, has topped the Best of the Bestsellers list beating international and national titles to be the overall number one bestseller in the Booksellers New Zealand Best of the Bestsellers List for 2007.

Publishing director Geoff Walker said the achievement topped off an extraordinary year of awards. Mister Pip won the Montana Medal for fiction and poetry at this year’s Montana New Zealand Book Awards, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and won the Commonwealth Prize for writing.

More than 46,000 titles of Mister Pip have now been sold in New Zealand. Another 25,000 copies have been sold in Australia and the book was now available in 30 countries worldwide. The United States, Canada and the United Kingdom had all bought rights to two of Lloyd Jones’ other books the Book of Fame and Here at the End of the World we Learn to Dance. A film based on Mister Pip was also looking very likely with negotiations well advanced.

“This is absolutely extraordinary. There has never been anything quite like it before,” Mr Walker said.

The adult Bestsellers Lists are compiled fortnightly by Booksellers New Zealand, and a Bestsellers List for Children & Teenagers is produced monthly. Sales figures are collected in specific categories – New Zealand Fiction, New Zealand Non-fiction, International Fiction, International Non-fiction, and Children & Teens. These figures identify the books which are being bought in the greatest numbers for the given period. At the end of each year the total number of appearances of each title is tallied to establish which books have proven most consistently popular with New Zealand’s book-buying public. This year’s bestselling books were:

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (Penguin Books) took the top spot for New Zealand Fiction, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards (Penguin/Viking) International Fiction, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (Simon and Schuster) International Non-fiction, Eldest by Christopher Paolini (Corgi) Children & Teens, and once again the iconic Edmonds Cookery Book (Hachette Livre New Zealand) takes top honours for New Zealand Non-fiction.

The full Best of the Bestsellers List is also available on the Booksellers website at www.booksellers.co.nz

ENDS

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