A conservative TV host on Tuesday expressed shock over the sales of a book authored by failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake – and not in a good way from the perspective of America’s right.
Steve Deace professed admiration for Lake and expressed dismay that the election denier’s “Unafraid,” which was released late last month, is nowhere near the Amazon’s Top 100 rankings, and asks fellow Twitter users to theorize about the book’s flop.
“Kari Lake, who I absolutely adored as a candidate and am still heartsick she’s not governor (yes, arrest Katie Hobbs as @DeaceOnline says), is the First Lady of MAGA. Yet her new book never cracked the top 100 on Amazon and is down to 555 today.
“Any theories as to why?”
Deace, in a subsequent tweet, notes that: “For context, DeSantis book was released way back on February 18th and still ranks 124 overall on Amazon. Our book Rise of the Fourth Reich, actually broke into the top 50 overall on Amazon earlier this year.”
Raw Story made the same observation about Donald Trump Jr.'s book in 2019, where the Republican Party was pimping the book out for him. At that time, nine conservative groups were caught buying the book in bulk to give away for free to people and drive up the appearance of sales. The elder Trump son then whined in an online video about being exposed for the scheme.
The social media site probably didn’t provide the answers Deace was looking for.
Twitter user @andreagail_k, in a reply to Deace’s tweet, linked to an April, 2021 Washington Post article describing how the GOP makes bulk book purchases to boost the book sales numbers of preferred authors.
The article describes how “Fortitude: American Resilience in the Era of Outrage” a memoir and social critique by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) rose to the top of some bestseller lists.
The Post’s Paul Farhi writes that “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.”
Other Twitter users were less kind.
“For context, the vast majority of the United States hates her,” Twitter user @BlueTx3 wrote.
Twitter user @LauraMojopaw wrote: “As a former bookstore manager, familiar with how the laws of supply and demand work in book publishing and sales, I’ll go out on a limb and say no one was interested in buying it.”
