Book sales slow from 'Super Thursday' across US and UK

(Andreas G. Karelias)

(Relaxnews)

The huge book relase date of October 1, known as "Super Thursday" in the publishing world, has not produced any blockbusters to rival bigger releases from earlier in 2009.

"Super Thursday" witnessed the release of more than 800 books across the US, UK and other English-speaking countries.

In the UK celebrity memoirs from Ozzy Osbourne, Peter Kay and Chris Evans debuted near the top of the charts but in the US it was the flops that were more notable, such as Her Fearful Symmetry, the highly anticipated follow up to the best-selling The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger.

In the UK, the first week of October was the best book-selling week in 2009, according to the UK-based website The Bookseller on October 9.

Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, released to enormous fanfare September 15,  is still the front-runner, approaching 1 million in UK sales alone. The third book in the Millenium crime trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, came second, but was 60 percent less popular than The Lost Symbol.

The soccer novel The Unseen Academicals ran third, just ahead of the latest Guinness World Records.

The announcement of the UK's native daughter Hilary Mantel's Man Booker Prize victory, however, accompolished the feat of temporarily pushing her Wolf Hall, a novel of royal intrigues, ahead of The Lost Symbol on Amazon.uk.

In the US, "Super Thursday" sales did not meet the numbers from 2008, with sales dropping by more than 4 percent in a year on year comparison, according to Nielsen BookScan.

According to Amazon's latest sales charts, the most popular books available in the US -- The Lost Symbol, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, recently deceased politician Edward Kennedy's memoir True Compass, children's book Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days -- were all released prior to or after "Super Thursday".