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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Best Sellers or Best Scam EVAR?

Yes, people are touting the power of Saint Sarah for the BIGGEST PRE-SALES EVAR, but Newsmax and a few other sites seem to be driving the pre-sale to create a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Now then, the practice of selling books to affiliated organizations, and then distributing them for reduced prices is nothing new. Heck, the Scientologists perfected the practice to stockpile books, then sell them a few more times. Hubbard has actually sold more books than he’s printed because of the practice. Brilliant, no?  The practice has created many “best selling authors” who actually haven’t generated a huge amount of sales at actual retailers. It has gotten buzz, and the number of books printed, and shipped can be verified, but the books that actually make it to market, that’s a whole different ball game. And Saint Sarah is certainly a beneficiary of the practice.

Though, she may not be paid as much as she thinks she will.  While, Unfit for Command was touted as a grand triumph of Conservative publishing, and Anne Coulter and Michelle Mallkin and a few others have stuck their toes in the water, their sales are, in part, illusionary, in that so many copies are bought up in pre-sale, and by folks who either distribute them at under the cover price, or simply toss them into storage to give away later. It is a practice that creates buzz, it creates numbers, but means little, since people don’t necessarily have books in their hands, but it drives up PR to be able to say that they have a “best seller” on their hands.

Best selling, because the copies are bought. Just not necessarily paid to the author, and not necessarily in folks’ hot little hands.

It shows a marked disconnect, and a dedication to style over substance that many Conservatives decried in the 80s, and so many publishers themselves wailed over with the rise of slick authors without much under the hood.

Saint Sarah’s book is flying out of warehouses, but is it really flying off the shelves?  It will get into a good number of hands, but a good many of them will be free or reduced price copies that illustrate the problem within the “Conservative Movement” that creating image and market presence is more important than the actual ideas. Rove and his ilk have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams to reshape the GOP and how it is marketed, and our party may never recover from their victory…


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/ 57 Comments

57 comments

  2. John Allen

    I mean, I really love books. That will put me in a serious quandary if one of my right-leaning friends or family members gives me a copy of her book for Christmas. I suppose I could toss it in the back of a closet. I sure wouldn’t pass it on to someone who might actually read it. Nor would I destroy it. Maybe I could force myself to read it if I thought of it as a comedic effort.

  3. fogiv

    I can’t wait until this goddamned Ditzkrieg! publicity/book tour is over.  You see she told Bawbwa Walters she wants to do more writing?  By ‘writing’, I can only assume she means hire more hack ghost writers to make shit up.  If she intends to actually write, you know, herself (guffaw), I’ll buy some stock in Crayola.  

  4. HappyinVT

    from National Review via TPM:

    As for the idea of a primary against Lindsey Graham, who was just re-elected in 2008 and will face voters again in 2014:

    How about in South Carolina, where McCain buddy Lindsey Graham has angered conservatives with his various apostasies? “What I love about the Republican party is how we invite — or at least we should be inviting — healthy competition in our primaries,” says Palin. “It makes every candidate more candid, more truthful, and really wear their positions and their values on their sleeve.”

    “As for Lindsey, individually, I really like him,” she says. “His constituents may want to send him a message to say ‘shore it up’ and come back to some more commonsense, conservative ideals.”

  5. Shaun Appleby

    That a woman of such mediocre talent and simplistic values with no apparent intellectual curiousity can become such a self-fulfilling media fascination?  What is going on here?  Sometimes I wonder if our decade-long obsession with ‘reality’ TV has permanently damaged our cultural aesthetic and good taste, such as it is.

    Is it the fascination with watching a slow-motion train wreck?  Or is this just ‘insider baseball’ political punditry writ large for the home audience?  If we become a nation of political rubberneckers we may very well veer off the road.

  6. HappyinVT

    found somethin in the book.  They’ve “gone dark” in order to completely investigate.  I’m a bit skeptical given his fascination with Bristol being Trig’s actual mother.  But it might be interesting to see what he thinks he has.

  7. HappyinVT

    founder of the Mudflats blog via TPM:

    …In Palin’s latest Facebook post she accuses Newsweek magazine of being “sexist” for featuring on its cover a photo of Sarah Palin holding two Blackberries, dressed in a tight-fitting top, running shorts, full-makeup, a bumpit on her head, leaning on an American flag which is draped over a barstool. She posed for the picture a few months ago as part of a photo shoot for Runner’s World magazine. “It’s a wee bit degrading,” she says now.

    The headline on the cover is “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?” The cover image illustrates exactly part of the point. Palin’s sexualizing of herself is part of the problem, and also part of the reason she has been so successful. The high heels, the winks, the commentators “sitting up a little straighter in their chairs,” and the Runner’s World photo shoot which includes posed photos of Palin stretching her legs as she looks at the camera lens, are all part of the phenomenon that is Sarah Palin. Had she been a frumpy overweight homely woman, McCain’s Vice Presidential pick would not have been her “destiny.”

    Not that this is fair. The allure of the shiny packaging, and our willingness to allow it to influence us speaks to a societal fault and a human frailty. In an ideal world, we should love people for their insides and we know that. But Palin’s insides are utterly unelectable without her outsides.

    So, why hasn’t Hillary Clinton or Condoleeza Rice (or Barack Obama for that matter) showed up on the cover of a national magazine in short shorts, leaning on a flag? It’s because no such photo exists. They understand that this is not a wise thing to do if one wants to be taken seriously and not end up with an embarrassing photo that makes them look like they belong on a calendar page in someone’s garage.

    Palin will sexualize herself but we are bad if we notice. She puts her children in front of the camera, but we are bad if we talk about them. She’s a good Christian, so we should believe all the mean things she says about people. She wants to sell lots of books but doesn’t want to go to big cities. She wanted to help Alaska so she resigned as its governor. She wants to be in the media spotlight, but she criticizes the media. It’s an endless and self-sustaining loop of blame and victimhood.

    And all of this is what gives us lots of things to talk about, and what keeps her in the spotlight, and what fuels her continued presence as part of the national dialog.

  8. HappyinVT

    with a free offer from newsmax.

    Dear Reader:

    Sarah Palin’s new book, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” has just been released.

    The book is controversial, attracting attention and proving to be the must-read book of the season.

    In “Going Rogue” Palin reveals what really happened during the 2008 campaign, gives her stunning assessment on Barack Obama and her thoughts on a presidential run in 2012

    We have two incredible offers for Palin’s book for you.

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    Newsmax.com

    It’s free with a one-year subscription to newsmax or $4.97 with a four-moth subscription.

  9. HappyinVT

    I guess book sales aren’t the only numbers to be inflated.

    That would be Fox “News” using campaign footage as book tour crowd.  Oops!

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