NEW YORK - Eager U.S. readers snapped up more copies of Harry Potter's latest adventure on the first day it was out than any other book sold in the country in all of 2005, according to sales figures released on Friday.
According to industry sales tracker Nielsen BookScan, J.K. Rowling's latest book on the boy wizard, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," sold 4.1 million copies in the United States on day one and 7.02 million copies for the full year.
Talk show host Oprah Winfrey proved her influence, as "A Million Little Pieces," a substance-abuse memoir chosen by her book club, took second place.
James Frey's memoir about recovering from drug and alcohol addiction was the second best selling book of the year in the United States, registering 1.77 million copies of the paperback edition for the year. Winfrey's book club recommended it in September. The book was first published in hardback in 2003.
"A Million Little Pieces" recounts Frey's time at a rehabilitation center for alcohol and drug addiction. It was the first book chosen when Winfrey relaunched her book club, one of the biggest sales drivers in publishing.
Ranked third was Khaled Hosseini's novel "The Kite Runner" about a young boy growing up in Afghanistan, followed by David McCullough's "1776," a history of the American revolutionary war.
Proving its enduring popularity, which is likely to continue with the release of a movie adaptation this year, Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" was the fifth highest U.S. seller of the year. His earlier novel "Angels & Demons" was in eighth place.
The following are the top 10 best sellers in the United States in 2005, according to Nielsen BookScan.
1. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," by J.K. Rowling (Arthur A. Levine Books)
2. "A Million Little Pieces," by James Frey (Anchor Books)
3. "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead)
4. "1776," by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster)
5. "The Da Vinci Code," by Dan Brown (Doubleday)
6. "The World Is Flat," by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar Straus Giroux)
7. "The Purpose-Driven Life," by Rick Warren (Zondervan)
8. "Angels & Demons," by Dan Brown (Pocket Star)
9. "You: The Owner's Manual," by Mehmet Oz (HarperCollins)
10. "Eldest," by Christopher Paolini (Knopf Books for Young Readers)
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