For those of you wondering whether Kim Kardashian‘s massive star power and army of Instagram followers were enough to carry her book of selfies to best-seller status, the answer is … no, not really. Sorry ’bout it.
Just-released figures from Nielsen Bookscan indicate that around 32,000 Americans have purchased the book since earlier this year, with many labelling it a flop as a result.
Selfish did not meet with the kindest reception when it came out in May, with many criticising the lack of care taken with printing, and the fact that certain parts of Kim K disappeared into the crease when opening the pages.
Is it fair to call Selfish a flop, though, and is 32,000 actually a disastrous number of copies?
The closest likely counterpart to Kim K’s tome might be Madonna‘s Sex, a compilation of titillating photos that sold upwards of 500,000 copies in its first week back in the innocent, pre-Instagram days of 1992. By that standard, Selfish is a failure, but in the modern era of social media and declining book sales, the comparison is not necessarily fair.
Tracking down exact figures in relation to publishing can be tricky. By contemporary standards, though, most seem to agree that around 5000 copies is the sales threshold to hit for your book to meet the basic standard for commercial success in the United States.
Per 2011 figures published on Gawker, Bookscan reflects about 70% of total book sales in the US, and at that time, fewer than 5% of books published managed to top the magic number of 5000.
As a work of non-fiction, Selfish is actually selling well – 2014 BookScan data says that the average non-fiction book sells just 250 copies a year in the US, and 2000 copies, maximum, in its lifetime. How do the sales of Selfish compare with other celebrity books, then?
Snooki‘s novel A Shore Thing (LOL) shifted just 8998 copies in 2011, while Kendall and Kylie Jenner‘s young adult sci-fi book (apparently they released one of those?) managed to sell only 13,800 copies in the first three months of its 2014 release.
On the other hand, Radar point to the fact that Lauren Conrad‘s LA Candy sold more than 500,000 copies, making it a certified success by any measure, and pretty handily thrashing Selfish.
Looking at it another way, given that Kim has 41.4 million loyal followers on Instagram, only around one in 1300 of these actually purchased a copy.
That’s not a great result, and while Kim has already moved more copies of her book than most authors could ever dream of, sales of Selfish are definitely disappointing.
That said, last year, her mobile game raked in $US 34.4 million in the July-September quarter alone, so she’ll probably be fine, you guys.
via Radar
Image via Instagram
