The Most of the Month, from West to East
We've posted our editors' picks for March on our Best of the Month page, and I'm sure I'll have some things to say about my picks soon (my Significant Seven pick was Richard Price's Lush Life--he's talking to everybody these days, including Dan Menaker on the debut episode of his hour-long book-talk Web show at Titlepage.tv and a three-part interview with Mark Athitakis on Critical Mass (they're up to part two)--and I contributed two to our Seven on the Side list: Dean Wareham's indie-rock memoir, Black Postcards, and Nicholson Baker's not-quite-convincing-but-interesting-nonetheless pacificist history of the runup to WWII, Human Smoke).
But one thing we've just added to the page this month that I think is pretty fun is a regional leaderboard for our bestselling books of the month (scroll down on the Best of the Month page to see it). We have two lists, one including all books and one limited to books published this month, and for each we list the top 10 in the whole country and the top 10 in each of four regions: West, Midwest, South, and East. (By the way: where would you put Texas? I went with the South, but they really should have their own region...) I wasn't sure what we'd see, but in the early March returns a few interesting things pop out: Stephenie Meyer is much more popular in the West and the South. Jodi Picoult and Valerie Bertinelli are popular in the East; Jonah Goldberg is not. Richard Price and Tori Spelling are doing well on the coasts; James Patterson's latest Maximum Ride and Mary Kay Andrews's new cooking mystery are big in the South. And African American bishop E. Bernard Jordan's The Laws of Thinking, not in the top 10 in any other region, is #2 in the South.
That's only based on a limited data set so far, though, since March just started, so I went back and filled in the data for February too, which you can see on our Best of February page. What jumps out there? Well, FairTax: The Truth, by radio host Neal Boortz, is a regional blockbuster: #2 among all books in the South but not in the top 10 for any other region. Among February releases it does make the top 10s in the Midwest and the West (barely), but in the East it wasn't even close: #122! On the other hand, Greg Mortenson's paperback hit about building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Three Cups of Tea, and Susan Jacoby's modern jeremiad, The Age of American Unreason, both did much better in the West than anywhere else. Baseball fans (or at least Baseball Prospectus statheads) appear to be grouped, as you might expect, in the East and Midwest, and, even less surprisingly, the only part of the country where the Sports Illustrated New York Giants Super Bowl Commemorative Edition made the top 10 was, yes, the East (it didn't even make the top 500 in the West or the Midwest).
And do Barack Obama's sales tell us anything about his centers of support (or at least interest)? Well, in February he was strongest in the East (#6) and the West (#9). But so far in March he's actually doing best (#7) in the South. Maybe it's those Texans, wanting to study up quick before tomorrow's primary...
I'll be updating these lists once a week, and I'll keep an eye out for more telling details. --Tom
P.S. Well, scratch that theory: I checked and I actually put Texas in the West...
Mister Snitch on March 04, 2008 at 06:06 AM
"Do Barack Obama's sales tell us anything about his centers of support (or at least interest)?"
Of course they don't. They tell you where the primary elections/caucuses (and therefore the most media coverage) are at any given time. Any publisher or author knows that books sales reflect local media coverage - that's why they do book tours. Surely, you know this as well.
(Former publicity drone, Simon & Schuster)
My Boaz's Ruth on March 06, 2008 at 10:19 PM
Texas is South.
Everyone who seceded in the Civil War is South, and texas seceded.