After leaks, interviews, and months worth of anticipation, Spare – the bombshell memoir from Prince Harry – has officially been released.
With some UK bookshops staying open until midnight to meet the demand for Spare, publisher Transworld Penguin Random House has reported that the book has sold 400,000 copies – including hardbacks, ebooks and audiobooks – on its first day of official sale. That number makes Spare the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book ever.
The book also topped Amazon’s bestseller list on its release day.
Speaking to Sky News UK, managing director of Transworld Penguin Random House, Larry Finlay, said: “We always knew this book would fly but it is exceeding even our most bullish expectations.
“As far as we know, the only books to have sold more in their first day are those starring the other Harry [Potter].”
The numbers come in after two tell-all interviews were aired in Australia on Monday night.
One of the two Prince Harry interviews of the night aired on Seven, with 487,000 watching as the Duke of Sussex revealed previously untold parts of his life to ITV interviewer Tom Bradby.
The interview Harry did with CBS’s Anderson Cooper was broadcast on 10’s The Project, recording 220,000 in the 6:30pm slot and 327,000 at 7pm.
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In the interview with Bradby, Harry touched on why he wrote Spare in the first place.
“Thirty-eight years,” he said during the interview. “Thirty-eight years of having my story told by so many different people with intentional spin and distortion felt like a good time to own my story and be able to tell it for myself.
“You know, I don’t think that if I was still part of the institution that I would have been given this chance to. So, I’m actually really grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to tell my story, because it’s my story to tell.”