The ninth book in Charlaine Harris‘s Sookie Stackhouse series, Dead and Gone, debuted to huge numbers and the number one spot on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list. Agent Joshua Bilmes (of the JABberwocky Literary Agency) reports sales in excess of 100,000 copies in that first week (according to Nielsen Bookscan). Publisher Ace Books had initially planned to print 240,000 copies, but upped the number to 388,000, and then raised it again to 425,000, when they wound up shipping 380,000 copies by the date of publication. Within ten days, they’d printed 593,000 copies and shipped more than half a million.
Bilmes also reports a lot of foreign rights sales for Harris:
Early Sookie publishers Fantasy Foundation (Taiwan), Feder & Schwert (Germany), and Fantastikos Cosmos (Greece) all extended their licenses for the first three books in the series. Fantasy Foundation and Fantastikos Cosmos also added more books in the series to their deals.
Long-time Sookie publishers DTV (Germany) and J’ai Lu (France) continued in the series, buying rights to Dead and Gone.
Baronet in the Czech Republic bought rights to Living Dead in Dallas.
Stjanfall in Sweden bought rights to Living Dead in Dallas and Club Dead.
Alfa in Turkey bought rights to Club Dead and Dead to the World.
Hachette in the UK consolidated the entire Sookie Stackhouse series at their Orion/Gollancz imprint, and bought rights to the forthcoming tenth novel, as well as the collection A Touch of Dead and the Harper Connelly novel Grave Secret.
New foreign rights sales include:
Hermes bought Bulgarian rights to Dead Until Dark and Living Dead in Dallas.
Penerbit Kantera bought Indonesian rights to Dead Until Dark
Zvaigzne ABC bought Latvian rights to Dead Until Dark.
Media Incognito bought Lithuanian rights to Dead Until Dark
Mag bought Polish rights to the entire Sookie Stackhouse series, through book #10, bringing to 29 the number of foreign translations of the entire series available.
In non-Sookie Stackhouse news, Harris (via Bilmes) sold Polish rights to the Harper Connelly novel An Ice Cold Grave to Fabryka Slow. El Anden bought Spanish rights to that book, while Delos bought Italian rights to the entire four-book Harper Connelly series: Grave Sight, Grave Surprise, An Ice Cold Grave, and the forthcoming Grave Secret.