Obama also bests rivals in book sales
By Hillel Italie
Associated Press - from The Philadelphia Enquirer

NEW YORK - Maybe it's the prose, or the charisma, or the novelty. But if voter excitement were measured by book sales, Barack Obama would be the clear front-runner.

Sales have exploded in 2008 for the works of Obama, the Illinois Democratic senator as he has climbed in the polls. Sales have stayed flat for books by Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), who has become his party's presumptive nominee despite seeming to be finished last summer.
"There's no question that Obama is a phenomenon, but to many people he's still a discovery, and they may be coming to his book to get to know who he is," said Jonathan Karp, head of the Twelve imprint at Hachette Book Group USA, which just released McCain's Hard Call in paperback. "I think people already know who McCain is, and he has demonstrated a long and broad appeal to readers."

According to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 70 percent of industry sales, combined sales for Obama's Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope averaged more than 35,000 a week in late February, more than triple the pace of early January, when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was still favored to be the Democrat nominee.
The memoir Dreams From My Father came out in 1995, and The Audacity of Hope, a political book, in 2006.

Meanwhile, McCain's sudden prominence has had no discernible impact on sales of Faith of My Fathers, a highly praised, best-selling memoir released in 1999, or of Hard Call, a book about character in public life first released last August and out in paperback with a printing of 50,000. Both, according to BookScan, have been averaging less than 1,000 sales a week, as have sales for McCain's Worth the Fighting For and Why Courage Matters.

Weekly sales for Clinton's memoir, Living History, have also averaged 1,000 or less throughout 2008. The book was a near-instant million seller when published in 2003.