Book Sales Figures: Shawn Michaels Book Tops All Submitted by Daniel Pena on Wednesday, June 21, 2006 at 6:53 PM EST
Actual sales figures on wrestling books released in the last year have been revealed. Here are the official BookScan industry sales through June. BookScan accounts for approximately 80 percent of all retail and online sales - so you can tack on an additional 20% percent in sales on the following books:
Heartbreak and Triumph: The Shawn Michaels Story is the best selling wrestling book in the last year as it has sold 45,478 copies.
Cheating Death, Stealing Life: The Eddie Guerrero Story has sold a respectable 33,212 copies.
Superstar Billy Graham: Tangled Ropes was quite a disappointment. The book has only sold 5,232 copies.
Anemic book sales in recent years is the major contributing factor in regards to why WWE is shying away from publishing books these days. Also, wrestling book sales haven't been too strong outside of WWE either. Here are the sales figures on non-WWE published books:
Vince Russo's book Vince Russo: Forgiven - which was released in November 2005 - has only sold 1,145 copies.
Hardcore History: The Extremely Unauthorized Story of ECW - released in March 2006 - sold 2,615 books.
Bill Watts' autobiography The Cowboy and The Cross: The Bill Watts Story (which was released in January 2006) has sold only 929 copies.
World Wrestling Insanity - a book which pretty much rips The McMahons, Triple H and WWE - has only sold 537 copies in its first two weeks.
Mysteries of Wrestling Solved sold a respectable 1,367 copies in its first week (released June 6th).
A story on wrestling legend The Missing Link - Bang Your Head: The Real Story of The Missing Link - has sold only, and I mean only 78 copies. The book was released on April 1st.
For the sake of comparison, Hulk Hogan's 2002 book sold over 57,000 copies. Ric Flair's autobiography sold over 62,000 copies.
