The Politics of Trendy Book Sales

Whether or not Barack Obama gets a bump in the polls after this week's Democratic Convention in Denver, his running mate, Joe Biden, has already seen a big uptick in… book sales.

After the news that he'd be joining Obama as vice president of the Democratic ticket, Biden's 2007 memoir Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics leapt back into the bestselling ranks, at #28 on Amazon.com (AMZN). 

But the secret nature of the VP selection process left publisher Random House unprepared for the renewed interest in the senator from Delaware.  "It's not surprising the Biden book has done well, but publishers were not ready for it," says one major publishing house executive. "The shipping time on Amazon is one to three weeks, which means they've run out of books and are waiting for the publisher to have more printed and delivered to them."

(According to published reports, Random House had planned on waiting until after the election to release the paperback of Biden's book, but now they're rushing to get it completed to meet the demands of the Biden sales bump. This means if you were ever waiting to auction off your Promises first edition, now might be the time.) 

One reason Amazon in particular sold out so quickly is that when it comes to political books, readers hit the Internet much harder than bookstores.  "Customers tend to browse at brick and mortar retail stores," says the publishing executive.  "Online purchases are driven much more by publicity hits and search."  So when a big news item hits, like Biden's selection as VP, or a publicity drive puts an author on Fox News (NWS), people often react by clicking.  A recent prime example of this can be seen in the success of the anti-Obama book, Obama Nation by Jim Corsi, which sits at the top of The New York Times (NYT) non-fiction best-seller list.   

Obama Nation emerged as a best-seller two weeks ago with the help of a blitzkrieg media tour involving national appearances on Larry King Live (TWX) and Fox News as well as a slew of regional radio talk show interviews across the country.  While media watchdog Media Matters reviewed the book and found "Obama Nation contains numerous falsehoods about Senator Barack Obama", the high sales numbers are indisputable.  Well, sort of.

On The New York Times bestsellers list, both Obama Nation and The Case Against Barack Obama by David Freddoso (the #6 book on the list) are marked with a small dagger that indicates some bookstores report receiving bulk orders.  Often politically-sympathetic groups will purchase large orders from bookstores to pump up sales numbers, which in turn will raise the profile of the book (resulting in sites like MainStreet writing about it) and its message. This then gets people on Amazon and other sites to purchase the book by clicking. While this may seem a disingenuous way to count bestsellers, for the publishing companies, business trumps politics. 

Most major houses dodge any sense of political favoritism by having different imprints handle different sides of the political spectrum.  Threshold, which published Obama Nation, is the conservative imprint of Simon and Schuster.  Random House, which put out Obama's Dreams From My Father, The Audacity of Hope and the forthcoming Change We Can Believe In, also owns Crown Forum, which publishes conservatives like the buttoned-down George Will and the controversial Anne Coulter.   But for an employee of one of these houses, there's no difference in trying to sell a Michael Moore or Sean Hannity book, says the publishing executive.  "Marketing is targeted at customers and isn't trying to trick customers into buying books if they wouldn't like them."  This line between marketing and political message can cause some confusion.

So when Threshold publisher (and former GOP operative) Mary Matalin called Obama Nation "a good piece of scholarship," critics on the left threw up their arms. While it might seem disingenuous of a publisher to refer to a book of questionable veracity as a scholarly work, it's important to remember that a publisher's job is to print and sell books. "There are so many books out there on so many topics, publishers are always looking for a way to call out their product and get the attention of the masses," says the publishing executive. 

Whether you lean left or right, the political book market is a big hit right now, and will continue to be so, especially online, through the November elections as Obama and his opponent, John McCain, dominate the news.  As the publishing executive points out, "The old saying 'Any publicity is good publicity' rings especially true [here]."  And whatever falsehoods are flung back and forth by the campaigns this fall, it's good to have at least one truth to hold onto, and sell books against.