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Random House has reprinted its record-busting Fifty Shades trilogy a further three times this week, bringing the total number of UK reprints up to 24, as sales of the three novels in the seven days to 30th June totalled 978,197.
Charlotte Bush, Cornerstone director of publicity and media relations, said stock supplies were currently good, with the company confident it was keeping up with demand. Random House Distribution m.d. Mark Williams said “half a dozen” trailers were coming in every night with copies of the books, which were then given an overnight turnaround for distribution across the country.
Overall last week £4.7m was spent on copies of the three novels, according to Nielsen BookScan figures, with The Bookseller’s charts editor Philip Stone predicting the trilogy will sell more than 10 million copies by the end of the year.
Stone said the books were bucking trends by sustaining their high levels of sales, with book one now having sold 1.6 million copies in 12 weeks on sale. At the same point, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Codehad sold 271,000. Stone said: “We’ve not even entered the summer holiday season yet. Including e-books, the entire trilogy has already sold more than five million copies in the UK so sales are likely to top 10 million by the end of 2012.”
If the trilogy does reach a 10 million total, it will put Fifty Shades of Grey in the frame to be the UK’s bestselling title ever, toppling Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Codeat 5.2 million. Meanwhile, other publishers’ erotica releases are beginning to sell strongly, indicating that the trend is taking off. Virgin’s re-issued Black Lace title, The Ninety Days of Genevieve, has risen to number five from number 13 in the Top 20 Fiction Heatseekers chart from last week, with a weekly sale of 2,198 copies. In the Kindle e-book chart, Michael Joseph’s erotic offering, Bared to Youby Sylvia Day, was at number 16 as The Booksellerwent to press, having already spent 24 days in the top 100 paid chart. Self-published erotica titles, The Millionaire Falls Hardby Sarah Fredericks; Fifty Shades of Twilight by Secret Anonymous, and Anything He Wants 3: Love and Warby Sara Fawkes are all currently in the top 20 of Kindle’s Movers and Shakers chart.
Publishers unveiled further erotica acquistions this week, with Michael O’Mara to publish Fifty Shades of Mr Darcy, a spoof of the series mixed with Pride and Prejudice, in September as a £7.99 paperback.
Mills & Boon has also now released a series of 12 re-packaged backlist titles from its Spice erotica imprint as e-book shorts, priced £1.99, with plans to release more full-length novels from August.