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Stephenie Meyer's The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (Atom) sold 89,549 print copies in a little under 19 hours, becoming one of the fastest-selling books since records began.
Strictly embargoed until 5:05am on Saturday 5th June, the book sold 79 copies per minute on average between its launch and 23:59 on the same day (when Nielsen BookScan collects its data). A grand total of £512,226 was spent on the £11.99 Twilight novella, which sold at an average discount of 52.3%, plunging its average selling price to just £5.72.
It is not known how many e-copies have been sold. However, the book is currently fifth on the UK iBookstore chart, where it costs £8.99, and 131st on the UK Kindle store, where it costs $11.74 (£8.17).
Only two authors have enjoyed stronger opening sales from hardback titles: J K Rowling and Dan Brown. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury) currently holds the fastest-selling record as it sold 3.6m copies in its first 24 hours when it was released on 21st July 2007, while Brown's The Lost Symbol (Bantam Press) sold 550,946 copies in its first five days on sale in September last year.
Helped by the Twilight spin-off's release during the half-term break, sales of all of Meyer's Twilight novels jumped by an average of 8.5% week-on-week during the seven days to 5th June, while Eclipse's sales were further boosted by the release of a film tie-in edition to the adaptation which hits UK cinemas on 9th July.
Two pence in every pound spent on books in the UK last week went towards a copy of The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, boosting total week-on-week sales by 2.1% to £26.6m‚ up 1.7% on the same week last year. It is the first time since December last year that book sales have been up year on year for two consecutive weeks.
Meyer returns to the summit of the Official UK Top 50 for the first time since the beginning of January this year, with both Patricia Cornwell's The Scarpetta Factor (Sphere) and Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (Quercus) falling one place to second and third respectively.
The adult hardback edition of John Grisham's first ever young adult novel, Theodore Boone (Hodder), joins the Official UK Top 50 in 32nd position thanks to a 6,422 part-week sale, while the mass-market editions of Jesse Kellerman's fourth novel, The Executor (Sphere), "Loose Woman" Coleen Nolan's Envy (Pan), and Monica Ali's In the Kitchen (Black Swan), which sold a disappointing 3,900 copies in hardback, are also among the new entries this week.
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner can currently be read online for free at www.breetanner.com until midnight on July 5th 2010.