This wimp is no pushover, as the latest installment in the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” franchise sold 1 million copies worldwide in its first week on sale.
Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks about 80 percent of the US market, said it had sold just under 314,000 copies in its first week on sale, making it by far the No. 1 selling book in the US last week. Second place went to Stephen King’s “Bazaar of Bad Dreams,” which sold a robust 60,000 copies.
The serial chronicles middle schooler Gregory Heffley and his troubles with family, friends, and school.
Author Jeff Kinney, with 164 million copies in print, is a reluctant author, having first aspired to be a newspaper cartoonist, but it did not work out.
“That is actually a regret that I have, that it never worked out,” said Kinney.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled that I became a bestselling author,” he said sitting in the bookstore that he owns and built in his home town of Plainville, Mass, midway between Providence and Boston.
With so much of its sales coming from overseas, Kinney did something rare and started his book tour overseas. A day after he spoke with The Post, he was jetting off to Madrid then to London, Lisbon and Paris before returning home for Thanksgiving.
His first US stop will be at his own bookstore the weekend after Thanksgiving — then it will be on to Athens, Istanbul, Bucharest, Amsterdam and Riga in Latvia. He’s already visited Tokyo, Beijing and Sydney, Australia.
In China, Kinney has more than 60 million books in print.
The hardcover book lists for $13.95. Don’t wait for the paperback to come out. Aside from the Scholastic edition available through the school book-fair market, there has never been a paperback sold at retail.
“I think if we had put the books out on newsprint, there would have been a different reaction,” said Kinney. There is a sort of weightiness to it. It asks that the books be taken seriously. Part of the conceit is that this is a kids’ diary.”