French publisher of Harry memoir prints 130,000 new copies

Strong orders for the French version of Prince Harry's tell-all memoir led Paris-based publishing house Fayard to print 130,000 extra copies only two days after the book went on sale, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday.

"This comes on top of the 210,000 copies initially printed," the spokesperson said, adding even more could be printed depending on orders.

Fayard couldn't yet give any exact sales figure.

The spokesperson said new orders for "Le Suppleant", the French translation of "Spare", were 20% stronger at this point than for the first volume of former U.S. President Barack Obama's memoir, a global blockbuster published in 2020.

In the book, Harry divulges that he had begged his father not to marry his second wife Camilla, now the queen consort. The book also revealed that elder brother and heir to the throne William had knocked him over during a heated argument.

International Publisher Penguin Random House said earlier this week the memoir had secured the largest first-day sales total for any non-fiction book it had ever published with more than 1.4 million copies sold in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Britain's King Charles and Prince William made their first public appearances since the publication of the book on Thursday. They made no public reference to the saga.

A Penguin Random House spokeswoman in Munich said that the publisher also started printing additional copies of the German language version on the day of the release.