Best-Sellers

A best-selling novel usually outsells a best-selling work of nonfiction, two to one. Last month Lin Yutang's philosophic miscellany of Chinese wisdom, The Importance of Living, was the only book that sold equally well in New York City and San Francisco, in Chicago and Dallas, Tex. And although its total sale fell slightly short of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' The Yearling, it was head and shoulders above rivals in its own field, and the only work of non-fiction in the past season to sell on the scale of best-selling novels.

New books begin to sell in Manhattan and Boston, then become popular in Chicago, often become best-sellers in cities of the West and South after their Manhattan popularity has dwindled. Ten percent of all books sold in the U. S. are sold in New York City and its leading favorite outsells the headliner of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and San Francisco combined. Thus a new novel like Howard Spring's My Son, My Son!, now leading the field in New York City, has just begun to sell in the West and South, although its total sale of 12,000 copies last month puts it ahead of the most popular books of those regions. Surprisingly The Importance of Living was selling widely in the country at large, while its New York City sales held up.

P: In Boston, which does more than four percent of the country's book business, buyers at the 110-year-old Old Corner Bookstore last month picked My Son, My Son!, bought ten copies to every seven of The Importance of Living.

P: Chicago does two percent of the U. S. book business. At Marshall Field's, the biggest Chicago bookstore. My Son, My Son! was the ranking favorite, with Middle Westerners showing a surprising interest in The Basic Writings of Sigmnnd Freud.

P: San Francisco and Los Angeles together account for two percent of the U. S. book business. At the Emporium in San Francisco two children's books, Heidi Grows Up and Ferdinand, outsold popular novels; at Bullock's in Los Angeles The Yearling and The Citadel were crowded hard by Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Emily Post's Etiquette.

P: In Atlanta, Ga. and Dallas, Tex., accounting for less than one percent of the U. S. book business between them, the best-seller was Gwen Bristow's romantic Southern novel, The Handsome Road, although The Importance of Living sold better at the new five-story Cokesbury Book Store in Dallas than it did in Washington and Cleveland stores.

P: In Cleveland, at the nine Burrows Brothers stores, the best-seller was The Yearling, closely followed by Einstein & Infeld's The Evolution of Physics.

P: In Pittsburgh, in the book department of the Joseph Home Co., The Yearling, My Son, My Son! and Neil Swanson's The Forbidden Ground were tied all month, had sold exactly the same number of copies at month's end.

From figures supplied by leading U. S. booksellers, last month's nationwide best-sellers were, in order of sales:

The Yearling--Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings--Scribner ($2.50).

My Son, My Son!--Howard Spring-- Viking ($2.50).

The Importance of Living--Lin Yutang --Reynal & Hitchcock ($3).

The Citadel--A. J. Cronin--Little, Brown ($2.50).

The Mortal Storm--Phyllis Bottome-- Little, Brown ($2.50).

Northwest Passage--Kenneth Roberts --Doubleday, Dor an ($2.75).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.