Ex-New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is best known for three things:
- Closing Island Beach State Park during a government shutdown then taking an expensive taxpayer-funded family holiday there.
- His disastrous handling of the deadly lane closure of the George Washington Bridge, which he is suspected of ordering to exact revenge on a mayor who didn't support his reelection bid.
- Running against Trump by declaring him unfit to lead (January 4, 2016: "Showtime is over. We are not electing an entertainer-in-chief. Showmanship is fun, but it is not the kind of leadership that will truly change America.") and becoming an embarrassing Trump sycophant after failing in the primary (February 26, 2016: "There is no one better prepared to provide America with the strong leadership that it needs both at home and around the world than Donald Trump.").
You'd think Christie would be a pariah, but for some reason the news channels like to bring this unsavory Tony Soprano-esque character on their shows and act like he's some kind of respected statesman. For the last few weeks it's been impossible to turn on the TV and not see Christie fibbing about, denying, and backpedaling on every terrible thing he's said and done for the last ten years. But despite the countless hours of free promotion for his new book, he's only managed to sell 2,300 copies in its first week, making it clear that no one but the news netoworks thinks this double-talking know-it-all is worth anything other than making fun of.
From Press Run:
A senior publishing source with access to the industry's BookScan tabulations tells me that Republican Rescue sold just 2,289 copies during its first week in stores, which constitutes a colossal publishing flop. That figure does not include digital copies of the book, but based on industry sales patterns, given Christie's weak showing in stores he likely sold only a few hundred digital ones. (On Sunday, "Republican Rescue" was ranked 15,545th at Amazon's Kindle Store.)
In comparison to Christie's 2,000 copies debacle, Jonathan Karl's new book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, sold 24,000 hardcover copies the same week as the Christie failure. How Christie was able to sell so few books after lining up so much national media attention during his marketing roll-out — "This Week" and "The View," "Fox & Friends," along with Fox News, Fox Business, the Daily Show, HBO twice, and CNBC — represents an extraordinary disconnect.
