NEW YORK (AP) — Sales for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s “Hard Choices” dropped sharply in its second week of
publication, but her memoir remains the country’s most popular adult nonfiction book. According to
Nielsen BookScan numbers released Wednesday, “Hard Choices” sold just over 48,000 copies last week,
compared to around 85,000 the previous week. The figures do not include e-book sales. Publisher Simon
& Schuster, which had announced that total first-week sales exceeded 100,000 copies, declined
Wednesday to offer any numbers on the second week.
Simon & Schuster issued a statement Tuesday saying that “Hard Choices” was placing high on
best-seller lists around the world, although the publisher offered few specific numbers.
“We can think of no other recent book written by an American leader to receive such an enthusiastic
international reception,” Jonathan Karp, president and publisher of Simon & Schuster, said in a
statement. “Hard Choices,” which covers Clinton’s four years as secretary of state, was released June
10. It has been among the most publicized books of the year, with an advance print run of 1 million
copies, and is easily outselling such popular nonfiction works as Thomas Piketty’s “Capital In the
Twenty-First Century.” Whether “Hard Choices,” the fourth best-selling book overall on the Nielsen
chart, can be called a success or disappointment depends on your perspective. Sales are far behind the
pace of her previous memoir, “Living History,” which came out in 2003 and sold around 600,000 copies its
first week. But “Living History” had a stronger commercial hook — Clinton’s thoughts on President Bill
Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky — and was published at a time when e-books were
almost nonexistent and there were hundreds more physical book stores. Releases such as Clinton’s, a
600-plus page nonfiction work focused on foreign policy, tend to sell much better in paper editions than
as e-books.
Much of the pre-publication interest in “Hard Choices” centered on whether she would indicate if she were
running for president in 2016. She writes in the book, and has said in interviews, that she remains
undecided.