
NEW YORK (Warner Bros. Records/
Annie Ohayon Media Relations) - Billy Corgan's highly acclaimed poetry book,
"Blinking With Fists," debuted at No 24 on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers List on October 31, 2004. According to Nielsen BookScan (the retail sales monitoring service for the U.S. book industry), "Blinking With Fists" was also the No 1 best-selling poetry book in the United States in its first week of release and has occupied the top spot for three out of the five weeks for which it has been on sale.
"We couldn't be more thrilled to achieve an instant sales reaction to the release of this book," states Jeff Seroy, Senior VP of Publicity and Marketing for publisher Faber and Faber. "We hoped Billy's very dedicated fans would come out, and they did."
Billy Corgan supported the release with a 14-city book signing tour of the U.S. and Canada. The tour, which commenced October 12 with a Q&A as part of the San Francisco City Arts and Lectures at the Herbst Theatre, saw unprecedented turnout for the signings.
"We had an amazing response with fans coming from as far away as Maine and Pennsylvania forming lines around the block hours before the scheduled appearance," said Amanda Darling, Marketing Manager of Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA. "Fans were so excited to see him they broke out in tears of joy."
Mr. Corgan presented his fans with an additional bonus of select evening performances in some of the cities. Billed as an "Evening of Poetry," the artist performed with special guest Yungchen Lhamo, the Tibetan singer, in a varied program of poetry and music in standing room only venues.
Billy is currently finalizing recording and mixing of his first solo album to be released on Warner Bros. Records early next year.