Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs (iBooks link) debuted at #1, according to Nielsen BookScan. The firm said that the book sold more than 379,000 copies in its first week of availability, three times more than the next best selling book, The Litigators, by John Grisham.
According to Reuters, that’s the best performance of any book since George W. Bush’s Decision Points and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth. Both titles were released in November of 2010, and both sold 400,000 copies in their first week.
Steve Jobs was released on October 24th, a little more than two weeks after Mr. Jobs himself passed away. It had been scheduled for a November release, but the release date was moved up in the wake of Mr. Jobs’s passing.
The book hit the top of retailers like iBooks and Amazon that update their lists live the day it was released. The Nielsen BooKScan list includes data from the traditional arms of the publishing world, including brick and mortar book retailers.