Sales drop for Harper Lee’s ‘Go Set a Watchman,’ but it’s still top seller

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Sales dropped sharply for Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” in its second week of publication. But it remained the bestselling book in the country for the week ending July 26, according to Nielsen BookScan.

On Wednesday, Nielsen reported sales of 220,000 for “Watchman,” less than a third of Nielsen’s total for the novel’s first week on sale. Nielsen tracks around 85 per cent of the print market, and does not include e-book sales.

Publisher HarperCollins announced last week that “Watchman,” panned by many critics, had already sold around 1.1 million copies in North American alone. The total includes e-books, audiobooks and pre-orders for “Watchman,” which topped bestseller lists soon after HarperCollins revealed in February that a second novel was coming from the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”