Britney Spears can add the title of “chart-topping author” to her list of successes after her tell-all memoir sold more than a million copies in its first week in the US.
Released on 24 October, Spears’s memoir The Woman in Me has proven to be a shocking, emotional read, with the “Toxic” singer writing about her romances, her mental health struggles, her conservatorship and her recent freedom.
On Wednesday (1 November), her publisher Gallery Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, shared that The Woman in Me had sold 1.1m copies in the US. It is currently in the No 1 spot onthe New York Times bestseller chart for nonfiction.
But the book saw success on both sides of the pond. The Woman in Me topped the UK’s official chart by some margin, after selling nearly 91,000 print copies in its first week.
In a statement released by her publisher on Wednesday (1 November), Spears thanked the people who purchased The Woman in Me for allowing her to tell her story.
“I poured my heart and soul into my memoir, and I am grateful to my fans and readers around the world for their unwavering support,” she said.
When The Woman in Me was first released, Spears, 41, had claimed on Instagram that the book had become “the highest selling celebrity memoir in history” on its first day. While Spears’s sales are certainly not to be sniffed at, a number of other recent memoirs slightly pipped her to the post on sales.
‘The Woman in Me’ sold 1.1m copies in its first week— (AFP via Getty Images)
Within its first week, Prince Harry’s memoir Spare sold 1.6m copies in the US when it was released in January, while the book of Donald Trumps’ niece Mary Trump shifted 1.4m copies in the same time scale in 2020.
Sales for Spears’s memoir also include the audiobook, which has proven to be a huge success thanks to Michelle Williams’s narration. As with Spare, clips from The Woman in Me’s audiobook have gone viral online, with one particular segment where Brokeback Mountain star Williams impersonates Justin Timberlake putting on a “blaccent” being widely shared.
Spears announced before the book’s release that she would not be narrating her own story, instead simply reading the introduction. “This book has been a labour of love and all the emotions that come with it,” she explained. “Reliving everything has been exciting, heart-wrenching, and emotional, to say the least.”
Spears has continued posting on Instagram throughout the book’s release— (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
The audiobook spawning such a viral moment is yet another demonstration of the public interest in Spears’s story. Largely, the singer avoided traditional press in the lead up to the book’s release. Unlike Prince Harry with Spare, or fellow recent memoir authors Jada Pinkett Smith and Julia Fox, she did not take part in any interviews surrounding the book.
Instead, the book’s biggest bombshells, such as Spears having an abortion while she was dating Justin Timberlake, were serialised in People magazine, which Spears also provided with a few quotes.
The pop star continued to post her usual patterns of dancing videos and motivational quotes on Instagram before and during the book’s release, but wrote in one post that she didn’t “like the headlines I am reading” based on its content.
Stressing that she had “moved on” and didn’t want to “harp on my past experiences”, she wrote: “Most of the book is from 20 years ago. I have moved on and it’s a beautiful clean slate from here!”
She continued: “This is actually a book I didn’t know needed to be written, although some might be offended, it has given me closure on all things for a better future!”
