Vanity Fair's exclusive pictures of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes's baby have helped produce the magazine's hottest selling issue.
The issue with baby Suri on the cover and 22 pages of coverage inside also resulted in the magazine's website receiving four million visits in one day, three times more than the previous record. The magazine also claims to have signed up 4,000 new subscriptions — again the largest one-day total.
No one on the magazine's staff other than those involved in the story or in the magazine's publicity department was allowed to see the pictures — taken by noted photographer Annie Leibovitz — until the magazine was on its way to newsstands and bookshops.
The magazine was shipped to distributors a day later than normal — to narrow the time when copies might have been sneaked to rival publications. To ensure secrecy, Vanity Fair even posted special guards at its printing plant.
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