This is too funny. The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Bay Area bookstores that refused to carry Sarah Palin’s book “Going Rogue: An American Life” on November 19, 2009. Link here. Let’s see what kind of responses from bookstores that they decided to print:
The new autobiography by moose hunter and failed vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is harder to find in the Bay Area than a hockey mom. Some bookstores figure it's one of those grit-your-teeth First Amendment deals that principled booksellers must put up with from time to time.
But many nonchain bookstores won't handle it.
"Our customers are thinking people," said Nathan Embretson, a bookseller at Pendragon Books in Oakland. "They're not into reading drivel."
There's not a single copy on the shelf. Embretson said no one has asked for it except for one guy, who was kidding.
And:
There are no copies of the book at Cover to Cover Booksellers in Noe Valley, either.
"Anything like that we wouldn't carry," said clerk Emily Stackhouse. "We're a small store and it would probably gross us all out. Some things you carry because of freedom of speech, but a book like that is just gross."
And:
Sheryl Cotleur, the head buyer for Book Passage, which operates stores in Corte Madera and San Francisco, said the two stores have sold exactly two copies of the book. That works out to one copy per store. Cotleur said two other people have asked to look at the book but no one else has asked to buy it.
"Nobody around here is particularly interested in her politics or her opinions," she said. "There's a certain curiosity, sure. But I don't think that translates into what people are willing to pay money for."
Had she ordered 50 copies of the book, Cotleur said, she would probably wind up shipping 50 copies of the book back to the publisher in a couple of weeks.
"I would expect to take a bath on it," she said. "The job of a book buyer is to be something of a psychic. You have to know your community. I don't want to waste a lot of money and shelf space on a book nobody wants.'
And:
The large chains have got modest supplies of the book and, so far, the sales have been equally modest. At Borders bookstore in San Francisco Centre, a Chronicle reporter stood watch over two small stacks of the Palin book near the front doors. In a 25-minute period, only one person bought a copy. He turned out to be a visitor from out of state.
And:
Clerk Darron Smith, whose job it was to keep the small stack of Palin books in their place on the new bookshelf, next to the Stephen King horror novel and the James Patterson murder mystery, said Borders stocks the book because that's what responsible bookstores do.
"I would never read it myself," he said. "I also would never push it on anyone. But it's here, if somebody wants to ask for it. So far, I haven't had anyone ask."
I think we get the point that the SF Chronicle was attempting to get across to the readers – nobody in the Bay Area is going to buy this book.
Now let’s fast forward to the SF Chronicle on December 20, 2009. Just one month after their story on bookstores and Sarah Palin’s book. Link here to SF Chronicle’s Best Sellers list:
Bay Area rankings are based on sales in independent bookstores in the Bay Area during the week ending Dec. 20. Rankings are provided by the American Booksellers Association and the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
nonfiction / bay area
1. Stones into schools, by Greg Mortenson (Viking; 420 pages; $26.95)
2. The Big Burn: teddy roosevelt and the fire that saved America, by Timothy Egan (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 336 pages; $27)
3. Going Rogue: An American Life, by Sarah Palin (Harper; 432 pages; $28.99)
4. What the dog saw, by Malcolm Gladwell (Little Brown; 410 pages; $27.99)
5. Born to Run, by Christopher McDougall (Knopf; 304 pages; $24.95)
6. Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday; 416 pages; $27.95)
7. Open: An Autobiography, by Andre Agassi (Knopf; 386 pages; $28.95)
8. The National Parks: America’s Best Idea by Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan (Knopf; 432 pages; $50)
9. Have A Little Faith a true story, by Mitch Albom (Hyperion; 272 pages; $23.99)
10. Superfreakonomics: Global cooling, patriotic prostitutes, and why suicide bombers should buy life insurance, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow; 270 pages; $29.99)
Wait – did they just report that the #3 book sold in Bay Area independent bookstores is…gasp…Sarah Palin’s book? Did they not read their own story from just one month ago! Or maybe the people in the Bay Area are more interested in Sarah Palin than the SF Chronicle wants anyone to know.
So this liberal newspaper decided to “Solve a problem like Sarah” by attempting to convince everyone that her book was not in demand. Nice try with the Jedi Mind Trick “Bay Area not maverick enough to read Pain book” story SF Chronicle. Didn’t you guys know that it only works on the weak minded?