march madness chart

While you fill out your brackets and scour the Internet for information on Memphis and UConn, books about college basketball are selling well and moving up the charts. In its first week (ending March 5) on the charts, Will Blythe’s To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever, sold 3,000 units to land at No. 1 on The Book Standard’s Sports and Recreation Chart and stayed at No. 1 this week after selling another 3,000 units.
Blythe’s book on the rivalry between Duke and North Carolina bumped another college hoops book, Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four, by John Feinstein, from its three-week reign at No. 1. The book has sold 18,000 units since its publication in February. Feinstein, a sportswriter and announcer for the U.S. Naval Academy football team, also wrote A March to Madness (1998) and Last Shot (2005), a fictional children’s book about a mystery at the Final Four.
“People are fascinated with the entire tournament because it’s a particularly dramatic sporting event,” says Heather Fain, director of publicity for Little, Brown, Feinstein’s publisher. “Unlike the NBA Finals or the World Series, each game in the NCAA tournament is make-or-break.”
So how did college basketball take over the month of Madness? Eddie Einhorn and Ron Rapoport explain the history in How March Became Madness, which sits at No. 8 on the Sports Chart this week and has sold 4,000 units since it was published at the beginning of February.
Many books on college basketball pop up in February or March, but another Duke–North Carolina book, Blue Blood: Duke-Carolina: Inside the Most Storied Rivalry in College Hoops, by Art Chansky, was published in November and has sold more than 18,000 units so far.
Last year, a lone basketball book climbed the Sports Chart starting after its publication in February. Miracle of St. Anthony, by Adrian Wojnarowski, follows the 2003–04 season of the basketball team at St. Anthony’s High School in New Jersey, landing at No. 1 for the week ending March 20, after the first two rounds of the tournament.
Luckily, for readers more interested in the book aspect than basketball itself, The Morning News offers The 2006 Tournament of Books, with 16 books in competition, judged by a panel including Bookslut editor Jessa Crispin, blogger and editor Maud Newtown, author Karl Iagnemma, author Dale Peck and Entertainment Weekly correspondent Whitney Pastorek. In true March Madness fashion, the second-annual tournament includes an NCAA-style bracket for readers to play along (and join the office pool). Judging starts on March 20.