Tony Blair's 'A Journey' on course to break sales records

Published on Thursday 2 September 2010 13:18

BOOKSELLERS have today reported record-breaking sales of Tony Blair's revealing memoirs entitled 'A Journey'.

Waterstones said the book was currently outselling all other titles and was close to becoming its best selling autobiography of all time.

The former prime minister's account of his time in Downing Street sold more copies on its first day of publication than the autobiographies of celebrities and sports stars including David Beckham and Russell Brand, Waterstone's said.

The tome has already shot to the top of Amazon.co.uk's best-seller list.

Rankings on Amazon's foreign websites show the book has also been a success in the United States, where it is currently the 12th best seller, and Canada, where it is 9th.

But it is proving less popular with readers on the Continent. It is just 366th in Amazon France's best-seller list, while in Germany it is down in 529th place ahead of its publication there next week.

A Waterstone's spokesman said: "We've never seen a book like this sell so quickly in one day. It was by some way the biggest selling book for Waterstone's yesterday.

"This is a serious book, a heavyweight political memoir. It's selling in the sort of numbers you don't see outside of mass market fiction with huge appeal -Dan Brown and JK Rowling are the competition here.

"We are bowled over. We are immensely pleased with the performance of the book on day one."