Bibliofile

Booksellers here, as in the rest of the world, are cashing in on the Associated Press leak last week of the most eagerly-awaited passage in Hillary Clinton’s autobiography, Living History—her reaction when the Prez admitted to l’affaire Lewinsky. It has done more to boost its sales than the $8 million advance she got from Simon & Schuster. No wonder the publishers don’t seem too keen to sue AP.

Lucky for Living History it hit bookstores a couple of weeks before the media blitz on Harry Potter’s return. "No one’s seen anything like this before," wrote Guardian’s columnist Nicholas Clee. "After Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when one million copies were sold overnight, we thought the Potter phenomenon couldn’t get any bigger..." But it has. Some two million copies will be sold in UK bookshops alone in the first week; nearly a million copies are booked on Amazon.com. There’s no estimate yet of advance sales in India, but publishers are convinced we aren’t likely to see anything like this again—until the next Harry Potter!