The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was released on May 19th and sold 500,000 copies in the first week and in the second week, 270,000 copies were sold. This total stems from audiobook, ebook and hardcover sales. This is actually pretty huge news, because many bookstores were still closed, which means most of these orders were made online.
The novel is set in the world of Panem 64 years before the events of the original Hunger Games trilogy on the morning of the reaping of the 10th Hunger Games—well before the lifetime of the story’s protagonists Katniss Everdeen. The reconstruction period 10 years after the war, commonly referred to as the Dark Days — as the country of Panem struggles back to its feet — provides fertile ground for characters to grapple with these questions and thereby define their views of humanity.
I believe this novel might be the number one bestseller of the year, I doubt anything else comes close. The original trilogy has sold more than 65 million copies in the U.S. alone (more than 28 million copies of The Hunger Games, more than 19 million copies of Catching Fire, and more than 18 million copies of Mockingjay). The Hunger Games trilogy has been sold into 56 territories in 51 languages to date.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.