BIRMINGHAM, Ala.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Following the announcement that Harper Lee will publish a sequel to her Pulitzer Prize winning novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Birmingham, Ala. based company Books-A-Million has sold over 1,000 pre-order copies of “Go Set a Watchman” in three days. The top selling cities in the nation to purchase the sequel are Montgomery and Birmingham, Ala., which are cities that belong to Harper Lee’s home state of Alabama and also where her first book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” took place.
“In less than a week, booksamillion.com has sold over 1,000 pre-order copies of ‘Go Set a Watchman.’ It’s no surprise that most of these sales have taken place in Harper Lee’s home state of Alabama,” said James Phelps, Vice President of eCommerce at booksamillion.com.
Alabama is not only Books-A-Million’s home state, but also the setting of Harper Lee’s first book, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ has been the quintessential coming-of-age novel for more than 50 years, but it’s more personal than that for Books-A-Million,” says Margaret Terwey, senior fiction buyer for Books-A-Million. “Because Books-A-Million is based in Alabama, we celebrate Harper Lee as one of us. We celebrate her because she was a small-town Alabama girl who wrote the book that everyone has been talking about since it was first published in 1960.”
“The citizens of Alabama have rallied around Harper Lee’s sequel because they remember a time when what she talked about in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was fully relevant in their lives during the Civil Rights Movement. It is still relevant to us today in many ways. Read it at different ages and you’ll be affected differently, but you’ll always be affected by it,” Terwey adds.
The “Go Set a Watchman” novel was recently discovered and will be released without any revisions on July 14, 2015.
Released in 1960, “To Kill a Mockingbird” is considered one of the greatest works of American literature ever published. It has won the Pulitzer Prize and sold over 40 million copies. Its racial themes and language have led it to be occasionally banned from public classrooms.
Lee lived in New York during the 1950s but is a native of Monroeville, Ala. where she currently resides. Many of the events in “To Kill a Mockingbird” are thought to be based loosely on her childhood observations while growing up in Alabama.
ABOUT BOOKS-A-MILLION
Books-A-Million, Inc. is one of the nation’s leading book retailers and sells on the Internet at www.booksamillion.com. The Company presently operates 261 stores in 33 states and the District of Columbia. The Company operates large superstores under the names Books-A-Million (BAM!), Books & Co. and 2nd & Charles and traditional bookstores operating under the names Bookland and Books-A-Million. Also included in the Company’s retail operations is the operation of Yogurt Mountain Holding, LLC, a retailer and franchisor of self-serve frozen yogurt stores with 44 locations. The Company also develops and manages commercial real estate investments through its subsidiary, Preferred Growth Properties, which presently include four retail shopping centers. The common stock of Books-A-Million, Inc. is traded on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol BAMM. For more information, visit the Company’s corporate website at www.booksamillioninc.com.
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