WikiLeaks memoir races to 537th on bestseller chart
A moist Jemima Khan once described WikiLeaks' Líder Máximo as "the new Jason Bourne" – but Julian Assange just isn't selling like the Robert Ludlum hero. Despite heavy publicity, Assange's "unauthorised biography" sold just 644 copies in three days. This placed the ghost-written memoir 537th on the best-seller list, the …
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can we not
have a comparison to katie price/ other Z list celebrities to show just how dire this is?
Per http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3493498/Katie-Price-book-outselling-Gordon-Browns.html Katie Price was still managing to sell almost 1,000 copies every three days of 'Pushed to the Limit' (described as "the latest instalment of the model’s autobiography") after 10 months on the market.
Per the report linked to by El Reg, the best selling book last week — One Day — managed to sell about 14,443 copies every three days.
nothing more instantly shouts "I'm a cock"
than the use of terms such as "liebour" , "nulabour" and "ZanuLabour"
"marathon not a sprint"
good analogy - at a public marathon you will often find people throwing up by the side of the road and some will collapse and, tragically, some of these will die.
Not especially surprising
Wikileaks published highly compelling evidence that a bunch of agencies that operate effectively above the law were — quelle surprise — acting as though above the law. If, like me, you think that greater accountability leads to better governance then that's a good thing. There's the counter-argument that what they did was likely to endanger actual operatives currently in the field and to negatively bias diplomatic relationships. I'm optimistic that the input of outlets like The Guardian will have caused the advantages to outweigh the disadvantages but the truth is that we'll probably never have a complete picture.
That all being said, Assange has always come off as so ostentatiously trying to benefit personally from the Wikileaks disclosures that you have to wonder about his motives. Not only do I not for a second believe that he's acting altruistically, but I don't even see him as an important component of the Wikileaks story. He didn't found the organisation and it's pretty obvious that not only do they not really need a public face but that even if they did they'd have been able to pick from a thousand others.
I'm therefore not really sure why I'd want to read a biography — he's a person with mostly negative traits that hasn't had any original ideas or built anything significant.
Huh?
I'm sorry but WTF are you babbling about?
Look, hate to say it, but releasing tonnes of internal memos from the US Embassies around the world on mundane shit, does nothing but try and embarrass the US Government. C'mon really? What value did we gain on finding out that HRM passes gas like the rest of us? No probative value.
Dumping US Military classified docs and after action reports? Again, yes, war is hell. But where is there anyone actually acting above the law except for the terrorists and Taliban who don't give a rat's fsck about any notion of law or fair play.
That's the trouble with Wikileaks. No real whistle blowing and it was Assange's way to attempt to get rich quick.
@Gumby
and what, pray tell, is wrong with trying to embarrass the US government?
The Unauthorised Biography
Can't we have a competition for the best sub-title. I'll start :
"An epic journey up my own ar*e"
Subtitle
"Why have standards when you can have double standards?"
or how about:
"Wikileaks groupies - they say 'no' but they mean 'yes!'"
Re: Subtitle
"The man from Townsville, he say yes!¬!!!!!!!!"""!"
Anyone fancy buying it, scanning it in, and uploading it to Wikileaks?
What pay for it out of my own pocket.... I mean with MY money.... are you fucking serious, no joke is worth spending that much. I'll just go to the library and see if they can get it in.
Scan
Actually 644 people have bought it and are in the process of scanning it. I guess that accounts for the low sales; everyone else is waiting for the upload to finish.
West country accent
"Maybe WikiLeaks could learn something from that – and release future confidential material in rhyming verse, with a South West accent."
Pam Ayres has a Berkshire accent - hardly south west?
On what planet is Pam's accent from Berks?
I haven't heard her speak for a while but unless she has had a voicebox transplant recently as a Berks residentI can say not even the most yokelly parts of the Royal county sound like Pam's whose is so westerly it's a minor miracle its not Irish.
Accent
She was borne in Berks and, traditionally at least, the Berks accent is a somewhat yokel accent. Things changed in the past few decades, with the adoption of 'estuary', RP and the driving out of genuine men and women of the soil. Yes, the culture of this country is slowly being eroded.
Hands up all ...
who read that strapline as "rw-r--r--" and said to themselves "yup, figures ..."
Andrew, may I be the first..
.. to actually congratulate you on a brilliant title? I, too, require a cleaning of my keyboard.
Thanks, that made my day (yeah, I'm easily satisfied :-).
Thing is
The Best seller list is done on orders not actual sales, that way they can make sure "waste of space ex summit" can always get to number one. Actual sales of the book just get in the way.
Paris because her auto-biography is probably as factual as this one.
As he didn't want it published...
...poor sales are probably exactly what he wants...
did NOT want it published?
Aw come on, I don't buy that line for a second. The guy ego is so huge I wonder how they ever managed to get him into that place he'd been staying avoiding extradition.
If he didn't want it published, why write it?
@did NOT want it published
Pay attention.
He didn't write it. It was ghostwritten.
low sales figures
and STILL managed to figure in the top 1000 at all.
It just goes to show how many people actually buy books these days.
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