Prince Harry’s Spare is currently No. 1 on the UK Amazon Bestseller Chart and one of the main street retailer’s biggest pre-order titles ahead of its official release on Tuesday.
The Duke of Sussex’s first memoir, Spare, was always expected to be a big release, but it didn’t come down to the fact that Harry and brother Prince William had a physical fight, and that the royal brother told his father not to marry Camilla. We’ve seen the recent publicity around the book, such as asking to be on the cover, and Harry taking heroin – increasing interest in the title.
An ITV interview with Harry that aired on Sunday also found him defending himself writing the book. he said: leave my country.”
Major retailers such as Amazon and Waterstones have sold the book for £14 (half of the £28 suggested retail price) since pre-orders began.
Spare has consistently been on the Amazon book bestseller list since its publication date was announced last year.
Sales at Waterstones have also been strong, with John Cotterill, Waterstones’ nonfiction category manager, calling it “one of Waterstones’ biggest pre-order titles in the last decade.”
“We expect Spare to remain one of the best sellers of 2023 with high customer interest post-publication,” added Cotterill.
But demand was much lower at independent bookstores, and pre-publication news may have dampened interest, one bookstore said.
Hazel Broadfoot of Village Books in Dulwich said there were “a handful” of pre-orders for Spare, but Spare is not the shop’s core market.
“I don’t know what tomorrow’s demand will be,” she said. “[There’s been] Following all the media coverage last week, there are no signs of a surge in demand. If anything, we expect that level of coverage to hurt our sales potential. I don’t think there are any secrets hidden in this book.
“Compared to the fall Bob Mortimer and Richard Osman pre-orders, and the latest Ellie Griffiths coming out this month, few spares orders are registered.”
Individual bookstores have told The Guardian that they can’t compete with heavy discounts and don’t expect much pre-ordering of the books.
Janet Brakspear of The Corsham Bookshop in Wiltshire originally planned to have two copies of Spare in stock, but didn’t expect much from her shop.
However, the shop had 5 pre-orders and ordered 7 more copies. “We raised our initial estimate,” he said, Brakspear said.
Full sales for Spare’s first week will be announced next Tuesday by Nielsen, which monitors book sales in the UK.
