Tom Wolfe's "Back to Blood" Cost $112 Per Reader

From this nice little profile of Karen Russell, the Pulitzer-shortlisted author of Swamplandia!, comes this nugget. Tom Wolfe’s lastest, “Back to Blood,” which went with him five years ago when he left FSG, for the cost of around $7 million, has sold 62,000 copies to date. (That’s according to Nielsen BookScan, which does not record sales at WalMart, Sam’s Club or BJ’s. Not sure how well Tom Wolfe performs at WalMart anyway though!) That’s at least a hundred bucks in advance per copy sold. These things happen.