True Blood around the world

Harris sold a Sookie Stackhouse Companion to Ginjer Buchanan at Ace Books. Harris will edit the volume and write a new Sookie novella for it.

Since the launch of the HBO series True Blood, based on the Sookie Stackhouse novels, Bilmes has negotiated numerous foreign deals for the series, which is now available or forthcoming in 23 languages. In France, J’ai Lu has continued with the series, buying rights to the newest novel From Dead to Worse, as did Russian publisher AST (which also re-licensed the first two books), while Estonian publisher Keskus continued with Living Dead in Dallas, Dutch publisher Luitingh moved on to Dead as a Doornail, and Open Book in Korea added books number 3 through 8 to their list. Brazilian publisher Saraiva came on board to the series, taking rights to the second, third, and fourth Sookie novels, while Santillana in Spain took pocket rights to the first three books and volume rights to the remainder of the series. Portuguese publisher Navalha will launch with the first three Sookie novels, Norwegian publisher Cappelen with the first two, Japanese publisher Softbank with the first three, and Israeli publisher Kidmat Eden with Dead Until Dark. In the UK, the Hachette group has decided to consolidate the entire Sookie Stackhouse series under Jo Fletcher at Orion/Gollancz, moving the first four books over from their Little Brown/Orbit imprint. Gollancz will rejacket the books, beginning in early 2009, for the Australian market, to coincide with the launch of True Blood on the Showcase channel. Later in Spring 2009, they’ll launch in England, ahead of the British True Blood launch on Fox.

HBO offers other True Blood launch dates around the globe: 23 December 2008 on France’s Orange; December 2008 on Canal Plus in Spain; January 2009 in Israeli network DBS; 1 February 2009 on Be.tv in Belgium; 9 February 2009 on HBO Asia; February 2009 throughout Eastern Europe via HBO CE; and March 2009 for SVY (Sweden) and YLE (Finland) second airings.

In domestic publication numbers, Nielsen Bookscan records that a boxed set of the first seven Sookie paperbacks has been the #1 selling boxed set in the country for four straight weeks, with weekly sales thousands of copies ahead of the next closest title on the list. More than 100,000 copies of the boxed set have been shipped. From Dead to Worse, the most recent hardcover, now has 180,000 copies in print.