Not so long ago, publishers had ample proof that Americans weren’t interested in books translation, even international best sellers. When Knopf introduced the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, a 100,000 copy first printing was considered risky. It’s amusing to look back to EarlyWord‘s first story about the book, a month before The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was released, when most libraries had ordered it modestly and some not at all. Today, over two years later, most large library systems own upwards of 300 copies and holds ratios are averaging 3:1.

Larsson continues to make news. Just this week,

• the New Yorker tackles the question, “what accounts for the success of [Larsson’s] novels despite their almost comical faults?”

• W Magazine features a photo spread on the English-language movie version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, coming to theaters in December

• the latest Scandinavian import, Three Seconds, lands on the upcoming New York Times fiction best seller list at #9 (tied with #8) in its first week of publication.

• Larsson’s partner of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson says she hopes to finish a fourth volume in the series.

Looks like we won’t stop talking about Larsson any time soon.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 14th, 2011 at 8:34 am and is filed under Bestsellers, Mystery & Detective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.