Monica's TV Audience Dwarfed Hillary's (Anonymous S&S Exec: 1st Printing & Sales Numbers Phoney)

NewsMax ^ | 12 June 2003

[Stultis]

Thursday, June 12, 2003 10:05 a.m. EDT

Monica's TV Audience Dwarfed Hillary's

The number of television viewers who tuned in to see Monica Lewinsky's 1999 interview with Barbara Walters was more than three times as large as the number of viewers garnered by Hillary Clinton in her much-ballyhooed sitdown with Walters on Sunday.

Despite publishing industry hype suggesting that Mrs. Clinton's book debut is one of the biggest media events of all time, only 13.5 million viewers tuned in to see her comment for the first time at any length on her husband's relationship with Lewinsky.

By contrast, a whopping 48.5 million viewers tuned in to watch Lewinsky's television debut, according to NBCSandiego.com - 3.59 times as many as the number watching Hillary.

Even NBC's little-promoted February 1999 interview with Clinton sexual assault accuser Juanita Broaddrick drew 23 million viewers - nearly double the number that watched Hillary-Walters.

On Tuesday, Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" put its own interview with Broaddrick against Mrs. Clinton, who was on CNN's "Larry King Live" at the same time. Again, Broaddrick outdrew Clinton, with Fox garnering 2 million viewers to CNN's 1.8.

In another sign that Hillarymania might not be all it's cracked up to be, renowned literary agent Lucianne Goldberg reported Thursday that the comments of one Simon & Schuster insider indicate that sales figures for Hillary's book may be off the mark.

Citing "a statement we received from deep inside the mighty publishing house from an executive in a position to know (always trust the working bees in life)," Lucianne.com quoted the executive saying, "No way would we publish a million copies of anything. It's only necessary to say we did. Besides, where would we put them?"

Asked about the 200,000 copies of Hillary's book supposedly sold on the first day of publication, the S & S exec told Goldberg, "There is no possible way for us to know that."

Editor's Note: Frustrated by the media puffery of Hillary's new book? You can fight back and expose Hillary: Click Here Now

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Media Bias

Sen. Hillary Clinton

[mewzilla]

Check this out.

[martin_fierro]

I'm more likely to trust Newsmax's anonymous sources than the NYT's.

[Paul Atreides]

So, in essence, Monica blew away another Clinton, huh?

[Southack]

When the Left trots out "Anonymous sources" who start telling Conservatives what they want to hear, you've got yourself a setup.

They did this back during impeachment, when they told us that Bill "blew up" and melted down during his videotaped testimony. Later when it was televised, Bill was calm, composed, and exactly the opposite of what the Left-wing "anonymous sources" had claimed.

So that, and Newsmax's lousy reputation, leads me to think just the opposite of the claim in the article above for this thread...

[Poohbah]

Newsmax's (actually Lucianne's) "anonymous source" is more likely to be factual, because his information tracks with what is known about the publishing business in particular (books require storage in a controlled environment, which costs a fair chunk of money for that many books) and business in general ("just-in-time" manufacturing tries to avoid stockpiling large quantities of goods, since warehousing them costs money and lowers the profit margin on those goods.

[Poohbah]

See Post #6 for analysis...

[aristeides]

Jonah Goldberg on NRO appears to confirm the story:

THEY'RE LYING [Jonah Goldberg]

I'm really trying to avoid getting too mired in the Hillary book drek, but I have to say I think Simon and Schuster is lying. I've talked to a couple people in publishing and I know a little about the trade myself and too much sounds fishy. For example:

The "leak" to the Associated Press was bogus and almost certainly came from Simon and Schuster. It helped book sales, generated buzz and was timed perfectly. The idea that they were angry didn't pass the laugh test.

Simon and Schuster claims they printed 1 million copies. People I've talked to say this is probably a lie.

Simon and Schuster claimed yesterday that they sold 20 percent or 200,000 copies of the book on its first day. Not only do I think this is impossible, given purely anecdotal information, I'm confident it is impossible that Simon and Schuster could actually know if they sold that many books. Such numbers are notoriously difficult to collect months after the fact. The idea that S&S got same-day data strikes me as bizarre. How come we've never gotten same day info like this before? Will we ever get it again? I don't think so.

If they really printed 1 million copies, why does S&S need to order another 300,000 copies? Why is it saying that they're making another reprint order next week on top of that? Surely, they don't think the 800,000 books remaining on the shelves constitutes a low supply?

I think this is all a very well-orchestrated campaign to create the impression of a much greater groundswell than actually exists. Hillary's motive for this is obvious. She needs to appear extremely popular. Simon and Schuster had to do it this way because -- other than the three or four leaked (dishonest) paragraphs about her finding out about Monica from Bill -- there is actually zero interesting, controversial or salacious material in the book. If you can't sell the book because of the content, you've got to sell the event. I think it's a con and I would love to see one of the breathless reporters covering Hillary actually do some truth-squad work on this.

Posted at 02:49

[mewzilla]

Simon & Shyster ping.

[mewzilla]

We should get a number going to libraries. I've found at least three library systems in large metro areas buying around or over 100 copies of Hillie's book.

[aristeides]

I suspect the orders for this campaign are coming from Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone. It sure would be interesting to see his e-mails.

[MHGinTN]

Lucianne proved her credibility again and again. The clintons have proven their deceitfulness over and over. I trust Lucianne to have a real source. I trust the clintons and their sycophants to fabricate again and again ... and the NY Slimes have proven this to be so.

[Poohbah]

I'm sure S&S is using the Millenial Year Application System Server as the source of these numbers.

Reporter: "Where did you get these figures?"

S&S Flunky: "I pulled them out of MYASS."

[js1138]

(books require storage in a controlled environment, which costs a fair chunk of money for that many books) and business in general ("just-in-time" manufacturing tries to avoid stockpiling large quantities of goods, since warehousing them costs money and lowers the profit margin on those goods.

So there might not be 8.5 copies of Harry Potter already printed? I'm crushed. I don't know whether to stay home Saturday and wait for Fedex.

[TLBSHOW]

The (Hillary Wants to be a star) book is just dollar store material.

[PMCarey]

I was in a Barnes and Noble in liberal Madison, Wisconsin this morning. Hillary's book was prominently displayed next to the door. In the half hour I was there no one went to the display, no one picked up a book, and I didn't see a single person in line with the book. For what's that worth ...

[HHFi]

I've written two books, one self-published and one from a major NY publisher, so I know a bit about this business. Last night, I was the guest of a local book club, and someone asked me about Hillary's sales figures. I told them not to believe the publisher's press releases. I also said that this is an "event" book: it is to books what "Daredevil" was to movies. A whole lot of hype builds anticipation, everyone who wants to see (or buy) the product rushes out and does so in the first few days, then bad word of mouth quickly kills it. I contend that at least half of all the copies of this that will ever be sold will have been sold by Friday. Anyone else who wants to read it (for whatever unimaginable reason) will pick it up at the library or the used book store, or wait six weeks and get it for $2.99 at any remainder bin in America.

Eat that giant advance, Simon & Schuster! You should've spent it to support real writers, not to bribe Democrats to support pro-big publishing legislation!

[Bonaparte]

From Simon & Schuster's description of Living History, found at their own website --

"She redefined the position of First Lady and helped save the presidency from an unconstitutional, politically motivated impeachment."

With this one statement, S&S utterly anihilates its own credibility as a publisher.

[Bonaparte]

"Eat that giant advance..."

It wasn't an advance. It was a campaign contribution disguised as an advance. Many sins may be charged to S&S, but ignorance of the book business is not one of them. They just aren't this "stupid" when they're looking to make a profit on a book.

Keep an eye on Senate bills sponsored by Hillary and other dems. S&S hasn't thrown away one penny.

[Richard Kimball]

There are several differences between the Harry Potter and Hillary Clinton books. Harry Potter has a picture of a WIZARD on the cover, as opposed to...well, whatever. Harry Potter also shows sales of over 635,000 at Amazon.com as of this hour. That's just Amazon. Therefore, I don't think they're expecting to warehouse the Harry Potter books. They've got sales of over a million just between Amazon and B&N, I'll bet.

Also note that Hillary!s book isn't even puffed on the Amazon.com Books page anymore. The fact that S&S stated they were doing a second printing of 100,000 200,000 and 300,000, depending on which source you got, the supposedly real-time sales numbers, and the fact that I could sell 50,000 copies of A History of String with the kind of publicity she's gotten in the last two weeks, indicates to me that the book is a bomb, not to be confused with "da bomb." All the fantastic "Hillary's book is the most popular book in the history of the world" BS is just that. BS. Lotta trees died for no good reason.