Going Rogue: Number One With A Bullet

Before "Radio & Records" and other competing industry magazines, the business of music and music radio had but one industry bible -- "Billboard" magazine. Billboard's Hot 100 chart was the be-all and end-all which told program directors which records were hot and which were not. The magazine used an icon -- which came to be known as a "bullet" -- to designate those records that had entered the charts in a high position, risen rapidly in the charts, and/or was considered to have the potential for further rapid advancement up the list. Any record that was "number one with a bullet" was the stuff of the music business' precious metals -- gold and platinum.

Although the book business is not directly comparable to the music industry, the extraordinary sales performance of her memoir makes it safe to say that Sarah Palin's Going Rogue is the book world's version of "number one with a bullet":

According to figures released yesterday by The New York Times, Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue, sold 469,000 copies in its first week of release. That makes the book number one on Nielsen BookScan’s bestseller’s chart. Palin’s book lands on the chart ahead of I, Alex Cross by James Patterson, Under the Dome by Stephen King, and The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, which ranked number two, three, and four respectively. HarperCollins, the publisher of Going Rogue, has stated that the book actually sold 700,000 copies in its first week of release. The publisher explained the higher sales figure by stating that Nielsen BookScan doesn’t keep a record of sales from mass market retailers such as Walmart and Sam’s Club. If the 700,000 figure is accurate, that places Palin’s memoir ahead of Living History, the 2003 memoir by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

A HarperCollins rep travelling on the book tour bus with former Gov. Palin has said that the memoir sold 300,000 copies on the first day that book stores were allowed to put it on the shelves. The first printing of the book called for a run of 1.5 million copies. last week, HarperCollins has announced a second printing of another one million copies.

Examiner Jeff Barbour says that Going Rogue is such a success story that more than a few political analysts have opined that it may provide Sarah Palin with the means to relaunch her political career. From our point of view, that is exactly what she is doing.

More from NielsenWire, Wilson Research Strategies and Bloomberg.com.

- JP