Hello,
It's another big week for books, both in quality and quantity. Among the two dozen authors with new titles publishing this Tuesday are Jonathan Franzen, Miriam Toews, Claire Vaye Watkins, Amor Towles, Lisa Unger, Xiaolong Qiu (with a new Inspector Chen mystery), and an excellent debut short story collection from Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, My Monticello. You'll find 10 below and all 24 on BookBrowse (click on the link at the bottom of the list).
Talking of Tuesdays, have you noticed how most books are published on Tuesdays?
Some sources say this is to avoid the expense of shipping over the weekend. However, that doesn't seem to make much sense as shipping times vary depending on distance. Also, only the most high-profile books have a firm on-sale date, so many titles get unpacked and shelved soon after arriving, even if that is a few days ahead of the official publication date. Another explanation is that Tuesday is generally a slow day for brick-and-mortar stores, so this drives extra traffic into the store; and is also far enough ahead of the weekend to allow for reorders if sales are looking good.
Perhaps the more credible explanation is that the bestseller charts are tallied based on sales from Tuesday to Monday, so releasing on a Tuesday gives a book a full week of sales.
Of course, that does lead inquiring minds to wonder at what point those that track bestsellers decided to start their week on a Tuesday. The first bestselling book list in the US was published in 1895 in The Bookman, a monthly New York based literary journal. Publishers Weekly started its list in 1913; I cannot find any information on the time time period they tracked. The first New York Times bestseller list was published on October 12, 1931, which was a Monday.
Personally, I've always assumed that the publishing industry settled on Tuesday because it's early in the week and consistently reliable as, unlike Monday which has at least five US federal holidays (thanks to the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, 1968), I don't think poor old Tuesday has any major holiday to call its own.
Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that Tuesday is the big day for new books.
If you have insider information on the Tuesday question, please do email me (just reply to this email) and I will share the knowledge in the future - as I'm sure I'm not the only one to have wondered about this.
Enjoy!
Davina, BookBrowse Publisher