Prince Harry’s memoir sold 1,430,000 copies on its first day on sale in the US, Canada and the UK combined, according to the book’s publisher Penguin Random House (PRH).
Spare became the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book ever, after 400,000 copies were sold on Tuesday in the UK alone.
After selling more than a million English language copies worldwide, PRH has confirmed that the book sold more copies on its first day than any other nonfiction book from the publishing house. The previous record was held by Barack Obama’s A Promised Land, which sold more than 887,000 copies in the US and Canada in November 2020.
Spare, the Duke of Sussex’s first memoir, attracted media attention in the week leading up to its publication after revelations from the book were leaked. Stories such as Harry and his brother Prince William having a physical fight, first reported in the Guardian, and the brothers asking their father not to marry Camilla caused a surge of interest in the book, which was already expected to be a bestseller. Spare was No 1 in the Amazon bestsellers chart based on pre-orders alone.
Gina Centrello, president and publisher of the Random House Group, puts the book’s success down to it being “the story of someone we may have thought we already knew, but now we can truly come to understand Prince Harry through his own words.” It’s a book that “demands to be read, and it is a book we are proud to publish”, she added.
Two million copies were originally printed to go on sale in the US, and the publisher is now reprinting.
