With Hillary Clinton's book "wildly popular" and the new Harry Potter book right around the corner, things are looking up for everyone associated with the book trade:
- The publication of "Living History," the memoir of the Democratic U.S. Senator from New York and former First Lady, has sparked some record-busting sales and massive public attention.
Clinton signed books for hours at a Barnes & Noble store in midtown Manhattan on Monday and appeared on television this week with prominent interviewers ranging from ABC's Barbara Walters to NBC's Katie Couric and CNN's Larry King.
All of this nationwide interest focused on books — often the less-than-glamorous ugly duckling of the media, publishing and entertainment sector — spells very good news for the shares of stocks of booksellers.
On Tuesday, Barnes & Noble rose 22 cents to $22.85. Borders added 35 cents to $16.80. Electronic retailer Amazon.com also gained 39 cents to $34.07. Wal-Mart jumped 97 cents to $54.76.
Viacom, whose Simon & Schuster unit published Clinton's book, moved up 45 cents to $46.20. Viacom is a significant investor in MarketWatch.com, the publisher of this report.
The Clinton book sold about 200,000 copies on Monday, the first day of its release, according to Simon & Schuster. The publisher paid had Clinton the huge sum of $8 million for the rights to publish her long-awaited memoirs. [CBS MarketWatch]
Article comments
1 - Phillip Winn
One of these days someone should sit down and analyze book publishing trends like several people have done with music publishing trends lately. I'd be very curious to see how the number of books sold relates (if at all) to the number of titles published, and I'm pretty sure that the stock price would have little to do with either.
I don't care what book it is, I don't think that one single title is worth an appreciable bump in stock price - certainly not $.45 per share.
2 - Bat Boy
even when that single book accounts for such a large portion of the sales for that day?
3 - Phillip Winn
It's just one day. Thousands of books are published every year, and millions upon millions upon millions are sold. Even the best-selling books of all time hardly register a significant figure all by themselves.