Slow Sales For Gawker Book

Posted on November 1, 2007

Mixed Media, a blog from Portfolio (now Upstart), reports that according to Nielsen BookScan data Gawker's book The Gawker Guide to Conquering All Media has only sold 242 copies since it went on sale earlier this month. Mixed Media says BookScan reports on about 75% of all book sales.

Portfolio writes, "Of course, the tracking service only accounts for about 75 percent of book sales, by its own admission, so you can add another 81 units to that total. Still, it's probably somewhat fewer copies than Simon & Schuster's Atria division was hoping to sell when it acquired the total in what I'm told was a $250,000 deal. Especially when you consider all the free promotion the book got on Gawker.com, to what was presumably its target audience."

Books like Gawker's book that are of interest only to those in the blogging and media industry probably only sell about 5,000 to 10,000 copies at best. It isn't the kind of book that could ever sell 100,000 copies. Even so, it is appears to be under performing for its niche. Maybe Gawker will see a pickup in sales with this negative press.