When do new books come out?

Factual Questions
1

CDs and DVDs are released on Tuesdays. Is there a day of the week that is the publishing industry standard to release new books, or do they come out all week long?

Zev Steinhardt

2

I don’t believe there is an actual date industry-wide. Books are released monthly, not weekly, and are usually in bookstores about two weeks before their publication month begins.

3

i notice most new books on fridays. some best selling writers have “opening days” that their book is put out for sale. the store can get in big trouble if they sell it before that date. for best seller types they try to spread out the days so that they don’t go out on the same day.

janet evanovich was to have her book go on sale in mid-june of this year. it got pushed back to mid-july because of harry potter. the date in the uk wasn’t changed, only the us date, due to book signing schedules. usually a us writer will have a book “open” in the us 2 weeks or so before the uk.

4

The reason for CDs coming out on Tuesday is that is when the Soundscan database system starts their week for calculating sales. Releasing on Tuesday allows 7 days for the 1st week sales so they will look as good as possible in the charts.

If there is not a similar system for books then it probably isn’t as important when the release date is. Harry Potter books are timed to weekends so kids can go to the midnight release parties.

5

So then why did Soundscan start their week on Tuesdays? Why not the infinitely more sensible Monday or Sunday?

6

Large “best-seller” books tend to come out the first Tuesday of the month. But most others come out Mondays, Tuesdays, and very rarely, Fridays(such as Harry Potter).

7

Don’t know why soundscan picked Tuesday to start their weeks. Maybe the stores asked them to start it then, to increase sales during the week.

Also if there are delays and they can’t get the CDs by Tuesday then can probably still make it to stores by the weekend.

8

Probably because they (and the stores) are too busy on Monday processing the data for all the sales over the weekend, the biggest selling time for most stores. But Tuesday is a slow day, and a good one to start the week.