J.K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy' sees respectable sales figures during first week

J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy is reportedly "on track to become the year's bestselling novel in hardcover," according to EVP of Little, Brown Michael Pietsch.

Which is another way of saying it'll be one of the best-selling novels of the year other than E L James' paperback Fifty Shades trilogy. Nielsen BookScan reports that Rowling's first novel for adults sold 157,000 hardcover copies in its first week of publication, and Little, Brown announced that the novel has sold 375,000 copies across all formats. The book only went on sale on Thursday (whereas books are normally published on Tuesdays), but it fell short of the record set for adult books by Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, which moved 550,946 copies in its first week of publication in 2009.

"The Casual Vacancy has exceeded our expectations," Pietsch said. While it may turn out to be the best-selling hardcover fiction of 2012, it probably won't be the top-selling hardcover overall. No Easy Day, Mark Owen's firsthand account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, sold 254,000 copies in its first week and continues to do well, moving 52,000 copies this past week against Rowling's adult debut.

Will you be purchasing a copy of The Casual Vacancy?

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