Still Doing It

I know, the play on the title's getting old. I'll stop, I promise.

Anyway, color me surprised: Beaufort's announced a 125,000 copy first printing on the OJ book. For reference - 125,000 is a large first printing, something about on par with other celebrity books. Expect bestselling authors like John Grisham, Nicholas Sparks or Stephen King to have between 500,000 and a million for their first printings. A new, unknown author could call 10,000 to 25,000 very respectable. A book from a small press might have around 5,000 for a print run, or maybe less. There's no shame in any of those numbers - just showing that 125,000 is nothing to scoff at.

And considering one of my first reactions to the announcement was "hey, smartass, what's your announced first printing?" I thought I should address it. (And hey, I was close - I guessed 100K.)

However.

He also claims to have 116,000 preorders, despite the fact that Barnes and Noble won't carry it.

That loud clanging you hear is my bullshit alarm going off. Is it possible? Yes. Is it likely? I have to say no. There are some books whose demand will far exceed their first printings - if you were a bookseller looking for a copy of America: The Book when it first came out and you didn't order enough, you were SOL for several weeks while the publisher scrambled to get reprints in. But there are other titles whose hype far overreached the actual interest in the book, and they've tanked.

As I've said, all of Kampmann's claims and statements so far have made me raise an eyebrow. Publishers don't disclose how many copies of something one store or another ordered - I don't know if it's a legal thing or something that is simply not done, a taboo along the lines of asking an acquaintance how much they make in a year - so unless Borders and Amazon and the big wholesalers admit how many they're taking, we won't know until press-time whether or not this 116,000 is real.