Sarah Palin's Book Sales

UPDATE: Palin's first week of sales was 700,000 according to her publisher. The Nielsen count (not including Wal-Mart, Sam's and similar sales venues) is 469,000. This put's Palin second only to President Bill Clinton in first week political book sales.

One of my favorite bloggers, Oregon Guy, was curious about stats on Sarah Palin's Going Rogue book sales.

Though I haven't seen any figures, it's possible to work out a guess from some of the recent book sales figures.

The New York Times and Drudge helpfully gave some book sales figures for last week. (These figures from Nielsen BookScan track about 70% of US book sales.)

- Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol sold 214,000 copies. It is currently #1 on Amazon's bestseller list, but was #2 last week.
- Drudge reported yesterday that Glen Beck's Arguing with Idiots sold 80,000 copies last week. It is #5 on Amazon's list.
- Ted Kennedy's True Compass, sold 39,000 copies. It is #14 on Amazon.

So, the #2 book last week at Amazon sold 214,000; #5 sold 80,000; #14 sold 39,000.

There are lots of small outlets that do not take presales but most of the big sellers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders do.

The Lost Symbol gives an idea of the sort of sales Going Rogue had to have to take over the #1 spot from Lost Symbol on September 30th at Amazon and hold it for 8 days. Just yesterday Going Rogue went to #2 at Amazon.

What's a good guess at Going Rogue's presales figure? Amazon's last week #2 and #5 sold 294,000 in just one week. So, a guess somewhere between 300,000 to 350,000 doesn't seem farfetched for Going Rogue in the last week and a half.