Wether you call it a comic or not, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a global phenomenon. The latest in the series by Jeff Kinney, #10 “Old School,” dropped on November 3 and sold over 1 million copies in its first week, according to publishers Abrams. The book was released simultaneously worldwide in 90 countries, and Kinney is on a worldwide tour, hitting China, Australia and Brazil. PW has Bookscan figures:
According to Nielsen BookScan, the latest Wimpy Kid sold just under 314,000 copies in its first week; BookScan tracks sales for about 80% of the U.S. print market. Old School was easily the top selling book last week beating out second place Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King which sold just under 60,000 copies.
There are currently 6.8 million copies of the volume in print worldwide. Each book in the series has topped sales charts, with a series total of 164 million copies in print worldwide.
As impressive as these sales may be, Asterix and the Picts, released in 2013 sold 2 million copies in a week. A new Asterix book just came out, Asterix and the Missing Scroll and while I haven’t seen first week numbers yet, they will be impressive.
The new Wimpy Kid book finds Greg Heffley and his town going “unplugged” and learning if like before electronics was really all that awesome.
Huge sales. Huge potential. sigh.
Growing up in a dysfunctional can be tough. It is even tougher when you have two dysfunctional families with stepparents. I had an evil stepmom and a parade of clowns for stepdads. I always tried to think of ways to get rid of my stepmom but I never acted on any of my plans. I found that it was therapeutic to write stories that would lampoon them. I have a new story called My Psycho Family! It is free if you have a Kindle and Amazon Prime. I hope you enjoy it.
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