If you want your book to sell well, have a movie made.
The release of a film based on a book often results in increased sales for the literary project, known as the “book-to-movie bounce.”
More often than not, the book is usually pretty popular, and thus is brought to the big screen. According to The Nielsen Company, book sales for “Eat, Pray, Love” have been enjoying a bump in anticipation of the release of the film.
Nielsen's data shows that the book had 94,000 units sold in the week ending August 1, which was the same amount of books sold for the entire 2006 year, when “Eat, Pray, Love” was first published.
Other books that benefited from the release of a major motion picture include Julie Powell’s “Julie & Julia,” which was made into a film starring Meryl Streep, and the February 2010 release of “Dear John” by Nicholas Sparks - who has had other shelf-to-screen hits including “The Notebook.”
“Dear John” the movie resulted in an uptick in book sales, contributing to over 1 million units sold during the 2010 year-to-date. That amount was nearly half of the book’s 2.4 million total sales, Nielsen said. Their data also showed that when “My Sister’s Keeper” by Jodi Picoult achieved its highest weekly sales number - 81,000 units sold - during the week it debuted at theaters in June 2009, five years after its original publication run.