Tipsheet

Buried in POLITICO Report is Mention of How Biography on Jill Biden Fared, and the Numbers Are Catastrophic

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  April 30, 2022 5:50 PM

On Friday morning, POLITICO published a piece by Max Tani highlighting "The Rise and Fall of the Star White House Reporter." The nearly 3,000 word report about how much of "a bore" it is to cover the Biden administration as a White House correspondent. Buried in there, though, is a mention that a book about First Lady Jill Biden sold just 250 copies in its first week. 

From the report:

Gone are the Tweets that sent newsrooms scrambling. So long to the five alarm Friday news dumps that had editors frantically rearranging weekend plans. Bye-bye to the massive TV budgets for White House specials and the firehose of publishing deals for books about the administration. NPD BookScan, which tracks book sales in the U.S., said that prominent books about Trump released in his first two years of office outsold Biden books during his first year and a half by, what an official there said was, “essentially 10:1.” A newly released biography about Jill Biden, by two well-respected Associated Press journalists, sold just 250 units in its first week, according to the company.

The book in question, "Jill: A Biography of the First Lady," by Julie Pace and Darlene Superville of the Associated Press, was released earlier this month, on April 19, 2022. While it has five stars on Amazon, these are only based on two reviews. Sure enough, there are no indications it's a top-seller in any category. 

Our friends at Twitchy highlighted this tidbit on Saturday morning, calling it "legit ROFL funny," which Gov. Ron DeSantis' Press Secretary Christina Pushaw noticed on Twitter.

These poor sales come even as the book has quite the advertising spread on its Amazon page. And, as the Twitchy post also highlighted, the book was promoted not only by Pace and Superville in interviews, but also by bookseller Barnes & Nobles. 

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Many took to Twitter to mock the book's sales when it comes to the 81 million votes President Joe Biden received in the 2020 presidential election.

Last April, when Hunter Biden's "Beautiful Things" came out, his book's debut was considered terrible as well, as it only debuted twelfth for Publisher's Weekly. Perhaps he's feeling better about it now, considering he at least ranked.