Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

Victory is ours! Instead of Going Rogue, maybe Sarah Palin’s new book should be called Diary of a Wimpy Governor? The former vice presidential candidate’s upcoming book has already seen plummeting sales and is now being offered for a whopping 69% discount by both Amazon and Wal-Mart. The ratings for Going Rogue: An American Life have tumbled in the Amazon bestseller list, now coming in at #5, just below Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days.

Of course, one reason for the drop-off is undoubtedly due to the counter campaign I led on Twitter and the YouTube - and largely supported by fans of Dan Brown in particular, who were shocked to learn that Going Rogue had dethroned the longtime #1 bestseller, The Lost Symbol, written by my good friend, Brown. The campaign suggested that Brown supporters who already owned his book, should buy copies of my upcoming book to dethrone Palin. It worked!

Much heralded on September 28 by Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house Harper for its mammoth 1.5 million issue run, Palin’s book skyrocketed to Amazon’s #1 spot on the bestseller list within a matter of days after becoming available for pre-orders. The book has a list price of $28.99 but was offered by many online retailers for as low as $15.79, an appropriate discount for a hardcover political book with a 7 figure print run. But now the book is being offered for just $9.00.

When Going Rogue first became available, there was a concerted online and Twitter effort by Palin supporters to boost its rankings and push the book to #1. With that, they succeeded. But the real question is if all those people will now feel cheated that they overpaid for her book; or worse, that they overhyped the book - much like her vice presidential candidacy itself peaked too early during the campaign. From what I hear about how the Amazon rankings work (a closely held secret algorithm… or is it “Al Gore-ism”?), it’s conceivable that Going Rogue could have nabbed the #1 spot with barely more than 100,000 in sales to Sarah’s core audience - which could leave as many as 1.4 million copies headed for the discount bin.  I know Sarah’s always been a foe of our dependence on foreign oil.  With that many left over books, she could probably live off the grid for a year in Wasilla.