NEW YORK – American singer Britney Spears’ much-anticipated memoir, The Woman In Me, sold 1.1 million copies in all formats in the United States in its first week of sales, the book’s publisher, Gallery Books, announced on Wednesday.
The early sales number puts the 41-year-old’s book in the ballpark of some of the best-selling celebrity memoirs in recent years.
In the same time frame, Britain’s Prince Harry’s memoir sold 1.6 million copies in the US, while that of Ms Mary Trump, niece of former US president Donald Trump, sold 1.4 million when it debuted in 2020.
Spears and her team took an atypical approach towards promoting the book, in which the singer recalls her rise to fame as a teenage pop sensation, followed by her years spent in a strictly controlled conservatorship.
Unlike Prince Harry, who participated in a series of high-profile interviews to promote his book’s release – including appearances on news TV show 60 Minutes and talk show The Late Show With Stephen Colbert – Spears did not do any face-to-face interviews.
She instead provided People magazine with sneak-peek excerpts, and promoted the book online to her millions of social media followers.
As has been the case with other recent big sellers, the 1.1 million sales figure for Spears’ memoir included purchases of the audiobook. It was read by American actress Michelle Williams, though Spears read a short introduction.
A news release from Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announcing the sales numbers quoted Spears as saying: “I poured my heart and soul into my memoir, and I am grateful to my fans and readers around the world for their unwavering support.”
Published figures put the price tag for the former Princess of Pop’s memoir at between US$12.5 million (S$17 million) and US$15 million.
In its 275 pages, The Woman In Me includes Spears’ recollections of her childhood growing up in the small Louisiana town of Kentwood, her early years on the variety show The Mickey Mouse Club, and her hard work in the recording studio to produce her first album after landing a record deal at 15 years old.
Its most-talked-about revelations centre on her relationship with NSync singer Justin Timberlake – during which, she writes, she got an abortion after he said they were too young to be parents.
The book frequently returns to the challenges of living under intense public scrutiny, particularly when it came to her body, her sexuality, her relationships and her parenting of her two sons with American dancer Kevin Federline.
The book is Spears’ first full account of her 13 years under a conservatorship, which her father, Mr James Spears, was granted in 2008 amid a custody battle and the singer’s series of public struggles. A judge terminated the legal arrangement in 2021.
In the memoir, Spears describes an adulthood in which security personnel dispensed her medications and put parental controls on her iPhone.
Ms Kristen McLean, an industry analyst for Circana BookScan, which tracks book sales numbers, said on Wednesday that Spears’ memoir seemed as though it had a good chance of surpassing one million in print sales in the US in 2023.
Only one adult non-fiction title – Prince Harry’s Spare – has reached that height.
Ms McLean said the success of Spears’ book was a strong indicator for a robust holiday book market, driven in part by a string of popular non-fiction titles including author Walter Isaacson’s biography of Tesla founder Elon Musk, author Michael Lewis’ book about FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and American actress Jada Pinkett Smith’s memoir.
“It feels like the adult non-fiction market is waking up,” she said. NYTIMES
