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PIKETTY ON FIRE: Bookstores Scramble For Copies Of Wealth Epic
Until this month, Harvard University Press had achieved two notable sales successes in the past 15 years. Stephen Jay Gould’s Dinosaurs in a Haystack: Reflections on Natural History and Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age both sold around 60,000 copies in each one’s first year, making them blockbusters by HUP’s scholarly standards.
By contrast, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has already sold around 80,000 copies in less than two months, and is currently sold out. According to Susan Donnelly, sales and marketing director at the 101-year-old house, that figure does not include an estimated 12,000 e-books sold (which Amazon is wisely peddling for a stratospheric $21.99), nor the 80,000 copies HUP is in the process of printing or the 35,000 it guesses it will print in the very near future. Do the math, and suddenly you are north of 200,000 books that the house expects to sell in a few months.
“It’s really been exciting,” said Donnelly. “People I haven’t talked to for years are calling me up: ‘You know I’m reading about your book!’”
And the majority of this success has happened in just the past 10 days, according to Donnelly, coinciding with a whirlwind tour Piketty conducted in the United States last week. “Between the past two days, we’ve sent 25,000 copies of the book into the world,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “People would buy more if we had ‘em.” As of Thursday morning, it remained the number-one bestseller on Amazon, where the hardcover is out of stock, and has reportedly entered the New York Times bestseller list. (Donnelly estimated that of the current English-language sales figures, 14,000 come from the United Kingdom and Europe.)
“We’ve definitely had high demand,” reported Lena Little, director of marketing at the Washington, D.C., independent bookstore Politics & Prose. “The one thing that was different” with this book, she added, is just how unexpected the sudden demand was. “It wasn’t like, ‘We don’t have it, but we can get in two days,’ like when there’s a good review in the Times or the Post,” she explained.
By contrast, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has already sold around 80,000 copies in less than two months, and is currently sold out. According to Susan Donnelly, sales and marketing director at the 101-year-old house, that figure does not include an estimated 12,000 e-books sold (which Amazon is wisely peddling for a stratospheric $21.99), nor the 80,000 copies HUP is in the process of printing or the 35,000 it guesses it will print in the very near future. Do the math, and suddenly you are north of 200,000 books that the house expects to sell in a few months.
“It’s really been exciting,” said Donnelly. “People I haven’t talked to for years are calling me up: ‘You know I’m reading about your book!’”
And the majority of this success has happened in just the past 10 days, according to Donnelly, coinciding with a whirlwind tour Piketty conducted in the United States last week. “Between the past two days, we’ve sent 25,000 copies of the book into the world,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “People would buy more if we had ‘em.” As of Thursday morning, it remained the number-one bestseller on Amazon, where the hardcover is out of stock, and has reportedly entered the New York Times bestseller list. (Donnelly estimated that of the current English-language sales figures, 14,000 come from the United Kingdom and Europe.)
“We’ve definitely had high demand,” reported Lena Little, director of marketing at the Washington, D.C., independent bookstore Politics & Prose. “The one thing that was different” with this book, she added, is just how unexpected the sudden demand was. “It wasn’t like, ‘We don’t have it, but we can get in two days,’ like when there’s a good review in the Times or the Post,” she explained.
From: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/117498/pikettys-capital-sold-out-harvard-press-scrambling
34 replies
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great things with their project paying off peoples medical debts, it isn't as if nobody knew about the problem of wealth inequality before.
as a matter of fact, right here on DU 12 years ago we were all talking about this fabulous article by the wonderful Krugman entitled "For Richer";
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/magazine/for-richer.html
I.The Disappearing Middle
When I was a teenager growing up on Long Island, one of my favorite excursions was a trip to see the great Gilded Age mansions of the North Shore. Those mansions weren't just pieces of architectural history. They were monuments to a bygone social era, one in which the rich could afford the armies of servants needed to maintain a house the size of a European palace. By the time I saw them, of course, that era was long past. Almost none of the Long Island mansions were still private residences. Those that hadn't been turned into museums were occupied by nursing homes or private schools.
For the America I grew up in -- the America of the 1950's and 1960's -- was a middle-class society, both in reality and in feel. The vast income and wealth inequalities of the Gilded Age had disappeared. Yes, of course, there was the poverty of the underclass -- but the conventional wisdom of the time viewed that as a social rather than an economic problem. Yes, of course, some wealthy businessmen and heirs to large fortunes lived far better than the average American. But they weren't rich the way the robber barons who built the mansions had been rich, and there weren't that many of them. The days when plutocrats were a force to be reckoned with in American society, economically or politically, seemed long past.
Daily experience confirmed the sense of a fairly equal society. The economic disparities you were conscious of were quite muted. Highly educated professionals -- middle managers, college teachers, even lawyers -- often claimed that they earned less than unionized blue-collar workers. Those considered very well off lived in split-levels, had a housecleaner come in once a week and took summer vacations in Europe. But they sent their kids to public schools and drove themselves to work, just like everyone else.
But that was long ago. The middle-class America of my youth was another country.
We are now living in a new Gilded Age, as extravagant as the original. Mansions have made a comeback. Back in 1999 this magazine profiled Thierry Despont, the ''eminence of excess,'' an architect who specializes in designing houses for the superrich. His creations typically range from 20,000 to 60,000 square feet; houses at the upper end of his range are not much smaller than the White House. Needless to say, the armies of servants are back, too. So are the yachts. Still, even J.P. Morgan didn't have a Gulfstream.
I'm not dissing OWS, but plenty of us knew about this problem a long, long time ago. The Krugamn article is a great (but depressing read). When I was cleaning out my desk our office shut down, I found the hard copy I had printed. I might post it as an OP.
You guys haven't met Mycroft yet. 
Link: http://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books
Thanks for pointing that out!
