Scott Morrison’s book tour has been a wide-ranging, jet-setting extravaganza. He’s been hanging out with former Trump confidantes Mike Pence and Kellyanne Conway, as well as the convicted felon and former president himself.
He even managed a moment of bipartisan solidarity and convinced Labor predecessor Kevin Rudd, now our ambassador to the United States, to launch his debut memoir, Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness, at the Australian embassy in Washington DC.
Morrison has made every effort to make sure this book doesn’t flop, especially given it launches in what one publisher told Crikey was a difficult non-fiction market. He’s given interviews to Antoinette Lattouf as well as Kyle and Jackie O.
Notwithstanding his infamous moniker “Scotty from marketing”, Morrison has also taken what we’re told is an unusual step: a double release of both a paperback and hardback edition of his book, rather than the traditional hardback-first approach.
Our good friends at CBD reported recently that it is infamously difficult to get access to Nielsen’s BookScan numbers, the general authority on book sales (although they don’t account for audiobooks, ebooks, or smaller independent bookstore sales). But like them, Crikey‘s enterprising ways have meant we’ve managed to obtain Morrison’s book sales data to date. To put the numbers in context, we’ve also got the first-month figures for some of his closest friends.
As of May 30, Morrison has managed to sell 1,991 copies of Plans for Your Good, mostly of the paperback edition. It has worked out to just over $61,000 in sales thus far for the former member for Cook, with only 186 copies in hardback form.
Which sounds impressive… until you compare it to the first-month sales of the man he deposed, Malcolm Turnbull.
Despite being leaked ahead of time (something that eventually drew an apology from a Morrison staffer), Turnbull’s memoir, A Bigger Picture, sold 33,373 hardback editions in its first month on sale, to a value of more than $1.3 million. By our count, Turnbull’s book outsold Morrison’s in the hardback stakes 179 times over. What’s that saying about battles and wars?
What about ScoMo’s best mate, 2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame? Tame’s memoir, The Ninth Life of a Diamond Miner, without a good chunk of the publicity associated with a prime ministerial debut, sold 13,138 hardback copies in its first month on sale. Tame and Morrison’s relationship is perhaps best remembered via Tame’s scowl at the awards morning tea, but we daresay these number might bring a smile to the face.
We also looked at Julia Gillard’s memoir, My Story, which sold 31,856 copies in its first month on sale back in 2014, as well as John Howard’s Lazarus Rising, which sold 25,115 copies when it was released in 2010.
BookScan data may not necessarily tell the full story, given its omission of smaller independent booksellers. To that end, Crikey contacted a number of independent bookstores in Morrison’s home electorate of Cook, in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. Only one picked up the phone, but the tale they told us was grim.
This particular bookstore, which asked not to be named, told Crikey it didn’t bother stocking Morrison’s latest works, and had negligible demand for it. Only one person had requested an order for the book since its release.
Crikey was told this was a fairly unusual for such a high-profile book. Apparently Niki Savva’s Bulldozed, which was described by veteran political journalist Laurie Oakes as “the gripping inside story of how Scott Morrison went from miracle man to roadkill,” has proven popular.
This can be a challenge for politicians’ memoirs, we were told: “Either a lot of people really don’t like them or actually stan them.”
It’s not the first flop for Morrison amongst independent booksellers — one former Bondi bookseller, in the heartland of where Morrison grew up, told Crikey they had to return almost 300 copies of Morrison’s 2019 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture oration to the publisher.
Are you one of the 1,991 people who bought a copy of Scott Morrison’s book? If not, why not?! Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
