Penguin Random House announced Wednesday that first day sales for the Harry’s tell-all memoir topped 1.4 million copies, a record pace for non-fiction from an organization that also publishes Barack and Michelle Obama, whose “Becoming” needed every week to succeed in 1.4 million when it was released in 2018.
The sales figures for “Spare” include hardcover, audiobook and e-book editions sold within the U.S., Canada and the UK.
“‘Spare’ is the story of somebody we can have thought we already knew, but now we will truly come to grasp Prince Harry through his own words,” Gina Centrello, President and Publisher of the Random House Group, said in an announcement.
“Taking a look at these extraordinary first day sales, readers clearly agree, ‘Spare’ is a book that demands to be read, and it’s a book we’re proud to publish.”
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One of the crucial highly anticipated memoirs in recent times, “Spare” is Harry’s highly personal and intimate account of his life within the royal family and his relationship with the American actor Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex.
Michelle Obama’s memoir has since sold greater than 15 million copies worldwide, its sales holding up over time partially due to highly favorable reviews. The decision is mixed to this point for “Spare.”
Recent York Times critic Alexandra Jacob called the book, and its creator, “all around the map — emotionally in addition to physically,” at times “frank and funny” and at other times consumed by Harry’s anger on the British press. In The Washington Post, Louis Bayard found “Spare” to be “good-natured, rancorous, humorous, self-righteous, self-deprecating, long-winded. And occasionally, bewildering.”
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