Crashing a book on the financial crash: E-book bestsellers breakdown

This weekly feature tells the backstory of how one e-book became a bestseller, and highlights bestselling titles that are selling more copies in digital than in print.

This week’s featured title

The book: “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong” by Edward Conard (Penguin/Portfolio, list price $14.99). “Unintended Consequences” is #24 on the New York Times nonfiction e-book bestseller list this week.

What it’s about: A former Bain exec explains how to grow the economy.

How it became a bestseller: “Unintended Consequences” was supposed to go on sale on June 28, but the New York Times Magazine decided to do a feature story on it in the May 6 money issue. Penguin was able to move up the e-book’s publication date to May 7, but the print book won’t be released until June 7.

“Unintended Consequences” on … Amazon | Apple | Barnes & Noble | Google | Kobo

New York Times bestseller list, week of 5/27/12

Here are the titles in the top-35 that appear on the e-book bestseller list, but not on the print bestseller list (click the link to expand the chart).

USA Today bestseller list, week of 5/10/12

USA Today includes all formats and genres in one list and notes which format of a book sold best. Here are the titles in the top-35 where e-books outsold print (click the link to expand the chart).