Earl Spencer’s memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister presented a split sales picture on its launch day, Tuesday, with London’s physical bookshops drawing few customers while retailer TGJones reported a sharply different outcome.
Across the capital, copies of the £28 hardback sat in shop windows at half their recommended price, yet buyers were thin on the ground at major stores including Waterstones Piccadilly, Europe’s largest bookshop.
TGJones, however, said it had shifted thousands of copies and that the title was its best-selling online product on launch day.
The retailer recorded a 76 per cent jump in online purchases on Tuesday compared with pre-order figures from the previous day.
Earl Spencer’s memoir Swan Song: Diana, My Sister presented a split sales picture on its launch day, Tuesday, with London’s physical bookshops drawing few customers while retailer TGJones reported a sharply different outcome
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TGJones released a statement providing an update on the memoir’s commercial performance. It reads: “Earl Spencer’s ‘Swan Song’ has been flying off the shelves at TGJones, with thousands of copies sold in store and the memoir being the top performing online product on launch day. The retailer saw a 76 per cent spike in online sales on Tuesday compared to pre-order sales the day before.”
The figures offered a markedly different picture from the quiet scenes witnessed at bricks-and-mortar shops across central London on the same day.
The contrast suggests that while physical bookshop browsers were scarce on Tuesday morning, demand for the memoir was concentrated online and through TGJones’s own retail channels rather than traditional high-street outlets.
The 62-year-old Earl’s first detailed account of growing up alongside Diana, Princess of Wales arrives nearly three decades after her death.
Across the capital, copies of the £28 hardback sat in shop windows at half their recommended price, yet buyers were thin on the ground at major stores, including Waterstones Piccadilly, Europe’s largest bookshop
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At Waterstones Piccadilly, dozens of copies had been set out in a prominent display, each marked with red “half price” stickers. The hardback was offered at £14 both on the shop floor and via the Waterstones website.
The store’s display included a quotation from Earl Spencer: “When asked, ‘What was it like, growing up with Diana?’, my first thought is always, But I don’t know what it was like not to grow up with her.”
Only a handful of early buyers passed through the doors of the Piccadilly branch shortly after opening.
Waterstones outlets at Trafalgar Square and Covent Garden reported a similarly subdued morning, as did the Foyles flagship store on Charing Cross Road. Despite window displays stacked with the memoir, customer numbers remained low throughout the morning at all four locations.
Earl Spencer defended the shocking allegations during an interview with the BBC last week
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Among the small number of customers at Waterstones Piccadilly on Tuesday morning was Mary Scheible, a 69-year-old retired pharmacist from Atlanta, Georgia, who was visiting London with friends.
Speaking to the Press Association shortly after 9am, she said: “I have always been fascinated in Diana and her story.”
Mrs Scheible, a grandmother, noted a personal link to the late Princess: “I was married the same year that she and Charles were married, so there was kind of an affinity there.”
She said she was keen to assess the memoir for herself amid debate over previously serialised extracts: “I just really don’t know what to make of it, and I know some of these things have been taken out of context or whatever, so I’d really like to read the book in its entirety and see if what’s being said is really what he’s trying to convey in the book or not.”
She planned to start reading “as soon as I get back to the hotel.”