How a Popular Documentary Can Influence Book Sales

By Dianna Dilworth 

51T2sYxeAfL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_Netflix’s popular documentary series, Making a Murder, has brought new attention to the bizarre murder case of Steven Avery in Wisconsin.

And while the new spotlight may be helpful for Avery, the documentary seems to be having a negative impact on Wisconsin prosecutor Michael Griesbach’s book, The Innocent Killer: A True Story of a Wrongful Conviction and its Astonishing Aftermath. The book argues that while Avery was innocent of the crime that put him away for 18 years, he is indeed guilty of the murder of Teresa Halbach (a claim contrary to the documentary filmmakers). Since the documentary aired, the 2014 book has been generating a ton of one-star reviews on Amazon.

Griesbach complained about the bad reviews in a Facebook comment, in which he revealed that in the first 18 months of its release, the book had an average rating of four stars. Now the book has an average of 2.5 stars. “I’m all for First Amendment free expression,” he wrote. “But sabotaging a book because you’ve been brainwashed and don’t like its conclusion, to use a legal term, is bullsh*t.”