Go Set a Watchman isn't selling as fast as the newest Fifty Shades book


Publisher HarperCollins announced Monday that in six days, Harper Lee's second novel, Go Set a Watchman, has sold 1.1 million copies including hardcovers, e-books, and audiobooks. An eye-popping statistic, to be sure. In fact, it's the fastest-selling book HarperCollins has ever published.
But it's not the fastest-selling book of 2015. That title, The Los Angeles Times reports, goes to a different reimagination of a much-loved book: E.L. James' Grey, which chronicles the erotic escapades of Fifty Shades of Grey's Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey from the perspective of its title character. Watchman, which Lee actually wrote before To Kill a Mockingbird, follows an older Scout in the third person. Grey hit 1.1 million sales in just four days this June.
Quick sales are probably (hopefully?) where the similarities between Grey and Watchman end.
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Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
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