![the rumpus dear sugar the rumpus dear sugar](https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/lT2Yazc7lYqwiMwcEdLKwLgoZks=/800x450/top/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/4OQ3N3A22ZCPDPTD5QIOV2WZQA.jpg)
Presumably, he’s not keeping them all for himself. “The last time he ordered a batch, I sent along some chocolate with the books to thank him for being such a superfan,” she says. There’s a man who has ordered at least 30 copies from Strayed’s local indie bookstore in Portland - she knows because when people order through the store, they can have her personalize the book, and after a while, she started recognizing his name on the order form. When I read the numbers, I found myself wondering how many people are represented by those 100,000 sales. ( The Believer’s recent advice collection sold about 20,000 copies, according to Bookscan.) Wild has sold more than six times that, but Tiny Beautiful Things’ sales are impressive given conventional publishing wisdom that collections of online writing tend to do poorly in print. According to Bookscan, Tiny Beautiful Things has sold around 100,000 copies, not including e-books. But her work as Sugar seems to inspire particularly fervent fandom. Strayed is best known these days as the author of Wild, an Oprah-endorsed best-selling memoir (and soon-to-be feature film starring Reese Witherspoon) about her quest to hike the Pacific Crest Trail solo. The book brought the column to people who would never read it on the internet.” “Several months after I began writing the column, I started getting lots of letters from older people who would say something like ‘I started reading your column because my daughter posted a link on Facebook and now all of my friends read it too.’ The audience expanded again when Tiny Beautiful Things was published. “What was interesting to me about the ‘Dear Sugar’ column when it was on the Rumpus was how quickly it traveled from what I think of as the core audience - young or youngish lit people active on social media - to people outside of that,” Strayed told me. “It’s funny because I always shy away from self-help-y kind of books, but the quality of writing floored me.” She’s since bought Tiny Beautiful Things for “tons of people.” “There’s been a couple of things in my life, in terms of potential material, where I’ve found it and just become obsessive about it,” Bellomo says.
![the rumpus dear sugar the rumpus dear sugar](https://wwd.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/nyt_sugar_mobile.jpg)
She recently launched a Kickstarter to fund an animated short film of one of the columns. I know women who have convened an informal book club to discuss, on multiple occasions, just Tiny Beautiful Things.Ī film and television producer named Lisa Bellomo was so taken by Sugar that she vowed to bring Strayed’s words to the screen.
![the rumpus dear sugar the rumpus dear sugar](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/nyt-sugarcalling-publicity_-_h_2020_.jpg)
I know dozens of women who proudly cop to our level of super-fandom. “It’s almost like there are little women circles everywhere that are into this,” Leigh says. I keep giving them away to friends who are going through breakups or family drama or career uncertainty, then buying replacement copies for myself. And even though the column was about the death of a close family member - something I’ve never experienced - I was in tears. Even though we were sitting on asphalt in the sunshine, I had full-body chills. In my car, she opened the book to that entry and, right there in the parking lot, she read it aloud to me. Leigh had picked up a friend’s copy of Tiny Beautiful Things recently and been immediately drawn in by an entry called “ The Obliterated Place ,” advice to a father who’d lost his son in a drunk-driving accident.