Despite the huge media blitz both before and after its release, The New York Times reports that sales of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s new book, Hard Choices, declined significantly in its second week on the shelves (emphasis added):
Sales of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s new memoir, “Hard Choices,” declined 43.5 percent to 48,000 copies in its second week on the shelves, according to Nielsen BookScan.
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About 85,000 copies were sold in the week after the book’s June 10 release, according to BookScan, a subscription service that tracks sales at over 80 percent of book vendors in the United States. Those figures do not include e-books, which increased sales by about 15 percent, to roughly 100,000 electronic and hardcover copies.First-week sales typically account for about 30 percent of the total, thanks to the publicity blitzes that accompany publishers’ biggest releases. That means “Hard Choices” could fall far short of the one million copies that Simon & Schuster shipped to bookstores, industry executives said. (Publishers sell books on consignment and must take back copies that do not sell in the stores.)
The second-week figures also increase the likelihood that Simon & Schuster will not sell enough books to make up for Mrs. Clinton’s advance, said a publishing executive who did not want to speak on the record about a competitor’s book.
Clinton was reportedly paid $14 million to write the book, which is a memoir of the four years she served as Secretary of State. The advance for Hard Choices was much greater than the $8 million she received in 2000 to write Living History, a memoir of her eight years as First Lady.
While the book is seen as a precursor to a presidential campaign in 2016, Clinton has been plagued by gaffes in high-profile television interviews. For example, Clinton said that she and her husband, Bill Clinton, were “dead broke” when they left the White House in January 2001, citing debt they accumulated and multiple homes. PolitiFact gave that comment a “mostly false” rating.
Clinton has since tried to reframe that narrative by saying that she understands the struggles of the middle class, claiming that her family is not like the “truly well off.” That is, of course, an absurd statement. Bill Clinton has earned almost $105 million from speeches since 2001. Hillary Clinton has earned around $5 million from speaking fees and has a net-worth in the ballpark of $50 million.
It remains to be remains to be seen if less-than-stellar sales of Clinton’s latest book indicate that she may not be as strong a presidential candidate as Democrats and the pundit class suggest. But Americans do seem to be burned out on the political class, and it’s clear that they consider Clinton to be part of the elite. That could be a big problem for her in 2016, when she’ll be painted as out-of-touch candidate in the mold of Mitt Romney.
Credit for the gifs: comedycentral.tumblr.com
