JOE McGINNISS

A lot of Beltway/Mainstream media tried to kill it at birth–I think largely because I call them out on their ongoing failure to investigate Sarah Palin–but THE ROGUE survives.

The generally acerbic Jack Shafer is somewhat acerbic in this Sunday’s NYTBR, but his fair-minded review is far different from Janet Maslin’s pre-publication kamikaze attack.

Here’s a quote from Shafer:

If God is the doorman, think of Joe McGinniss as the bouncer, doing his best to oust Palin from the political club and boot her back to Wasilla. Drawing on scores of interviews and voluminous readings of contemporary Alaskan history and journalism, he assembles a portrait of Palin as a daffy but savvy megalomaniac who excels at keeping herself in the public eye — the Christ-drunk Paris Hilton of politics, if you will. He concludes his book by comparing Palin’s political gyrations to a “lap dance” and her career to “a freaky sideshow performed on a carnival midway” until John McCain transformed her “into what many still seem to see as the greatest show on earth” by choosing her as a running mate.

THE ROGUE is selected as an “Editor’s Choice” in the October 9 edition of the New York Times Book Review. That is a distinction not carelessly awarded.

It also debuts on the New York Times Best-Seller list on October 9, as #7 on the e-book nonfiction list, and as #10 on the hard-cover list.

And that’s on the basis of only the first six days of sales, not even a full week.

Some hostile Beltway sites gleefully pointed to the fact that THE ROGUE had sold “only” six thousand copies, as recorded by Bookscan.

As if 1,000 copies a day was a poor rate of sale.

In fact, the Bookscan number of 6,000 represents only 75 percent of hard-cover sales.

So make the six thousand 8,000.

And Bookscan does not include e-book sales, so nobody buying for a Kindle or Nook gets counted.
Given that the NYTimes list ranks the book even higher on its e-book best seller list than on its hard-cover list, we can add another 8,000.

And then there’s Canada, whose sales are not included, and which average up to ten percent of U.S. sales. Ten percent of 16,000=1,600.

So a more realistic count of sales over the first six days would be at least 17,500.

Hey, the numbers will be what they will be.

But the MSM attempt to spin the first six days into evidence of “lukewarm” reception is dishonest.

In any case, having first made the New York Times Best-Seller List top ten in 1969, and having made it again in 2011, that gives me best-sellers written over a span of 42 years, which my publisher believes to be a record.

And let’s not forget that four of the books I wrote within that span were also NYT Top Ten Best-Sellers.

I don’t say this to brag, but to point out how pathetic it is for Sarah and her dwindling band of zealots to refer to me as a “so-called journalist,” in quotes, as if I’ve been some sort of fringe figure all my life.

I’ll see you on the Bill Maher show on HBO next Friday night, and many of you might hear my upcoming radio interviews before that.

Thanks for continuing to check in.

I hope that all of you, having seen the maelstrom into which I’ve plunged, can understand why I’ve had to suspend comments for a while.