I had a friend in high school that would say “Sparknotes!” as he handed in the papers he downloaded from the internet.
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If we’re using 2p2’s SE forum as a model for moderation, you should be temp-banned for hurricane smack.
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Reading Cory Robin’s “The Reactionary Mind”. Apparently Ayn Rand sold 800k books in 2008.
(A “successful” book sells 50k, a blockbuster sells like 200k.)
sounds like the market is deciding
I know a lot of conservative books sales are a grift, but Mark Levine is moving product.
https://twitter.com/mikeduncan/status/1429150918424080387?s=20
The tweet is about Duncan’s book at #6 (which I bought because I’ve gotten a ton of value from his Revolutions podcast), but that Mark Levin has the #1 book and it’s called “American Marxism” is pretty disturbing. Conservatives grift on bulk books sales, but not via Amazon.
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What is it for cons some kind of money laundering? Buy a shitton of books with a bag of cash to support a political campaign?
The scams are usually about bulk sales and not Amazon sales. Things like a Ted Cruz PAC will buy, say, 50k copies in bulk and then give them as “gifts” to donors. Some conservative think tanks will also buy a ton of copies from supportive politicos and let the books rot. I think the Know Your Enemy podcast host mentioned that he interned at Heritage in a basement full of boxes of books by conservatives.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/474662-the-myth-of-the-conservative-bestseller
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/gop-book-deals/2021/04/15/154f3820-9ca5-11eb-b7a8-014b14aeb9e4_story.html
The National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect GOP candidates to Congress, spent nearly $400,000 on bulk purchases of the book. The organization acquired 25,500 copies through two online booksellers, enough to fuel “Fortitude’s” ascent up the bestseller lists. The NRCC said it gave away copies as incentives to donors, raising $1.5 million in the process.
The NRCC wasn’t the only outfit providing a big-bucks boost to conservative authors. Four party-affiliated organizations, including the Republican National Committee, collectively spent more than $1 million during the past election cycle mass-purchasing books written by GOP candidates, elected officials and personalities, according to Federal Election Commission expenditure reports. The purchases helped turn several volumes into bestsellers.
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The crazy thing to me about authentic right wing book sales is that conservatives don’t read. Certainly not people who listen to AM radio on the reg. I suspect this is the deplorable version of shitlibs having Robert Caro books they’ve never read front and center in their houses.
Hey, The Power Broker is still on my to-do list, OK?
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I mean I don’t know the % of various books read (Caro is entertaining, but how many copies of Piketty’s (or Marx’s) “Capital" have been read). I suspect more conservative books are read than you (or I) might think, as I’ve always discounted the idea that such books are actually read. Like read a Ted Cruz book, really? Then again, the effort involved in reading a Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, or Mark Levine books can’t be more than like a spy thriller or a romance book and some olds furiously plow through those types of books.
It seems unfair to compare books like “American Marxism” to real books, even entertaining ones like “Guns of August,” but it would be cool to have some actual data.
In at least 3 Trumpers’ houses that I can remember that I’ve been to in the prior five years they had a copy of Art of the Deal prominently displayed on their coffee table/kitchen counter. Whether they actually read it idk, but they were certainly proud to have bought it.
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I wonder if you could look at something like physical book vs ebook sales to determine how much of a book’s volume is virtue signaling vs actual reading. Seems like it’d be tough to isolate that when there’s gotta be correlation between olds that buy physical books still and olds that read conservative stuff.
Dovetailing this with Hokie’s thought, do they have to buy physical copies? Seems like the grift is much better if they just pay for the digital version which requires no manufacturing would retrieve a higher profit. Then again, if you just have digital books it is hard to burn them when the time comes.
This bring up another issue, how many conservative best sellers are actually written by their authors? You think Bill O’Reilly was doing late nights at the NY Public Library to research “Killing Lincoln”, etc? He may have proofread the final manuscript.
I read Bill O’Reiley’s serial killer detective book.
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Also, I’m going to come clean. Back in October of 2009, I ordered Atlas Shrugged and Art of the Deal at the same time. I’m 95% sure I ordered them based on a review of popular books mentioned in BFI forum.
I looked at the other books that I ordered at the same time:
- The Warren Buffet Way
- Think and Grow Rich
- How to Win Friends & Influence People
- Stumbling on Happiness
- The Power of Now
Please don’t ban me. My saving grace is the only two books I actually didn’t read from that lot are Atlas Shrugged and Art of the Deal.
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I suspect this is an evolving issue–grifts change with technology. I personally find myself reading ebooks more and more. My phone is easier to hold than an 800 page history book, and my library is already substantial enough to impress company. I have also had the experience of going through the (mediocre) book collections of the recently deceased a couple of time in the last few years. (Jefferson’s library is one of the rare instances of a decent afterlife for books.)
As far data, I bet Amazon knows exactly how many ebooks that are bought are read, and how many pages of each. It’s funny when you read the first chapters of some books and many passages are highlighted–by late in the book ain’t nothing highlighted.
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That’s pretty much an entire basket of suck. Sorry you had to go through that.
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Was it better than Ben Shapiro’s spy book?