Simon & Schuster is printing 200,000 copies of DisneyWar, which probably means 80-100,000. But, writes Daniel Gross in Slate, those are still mighty high expectations for a boardroom drama.
…The excellent Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, written by three Fortune writers who collectively received $1.4 million for their troubles, has probably sold around 70,000 copies. Power Failure, penned by Mimi Swartz and whistleblower Sherron Watkins, sold fewer than 30,000 copies. According to Nielsen BookScan, which counts about 70 percent of U.S. sales, 24 Days: How Two Wall Street Journal Reporters Uncovered the Lies that Destroyed Faith in Corporate America has sold 16,765 copies.
But the Enron books were blockbusters compared with those about the botched AOL-Time Warner deal. According to Bookscan, Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner by Nina Munk, sold 5,000; There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future by all-star Wall Street Journal reporter Kara Swisher, sold 3,744; and Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner by Alec Klein of the Washington Post, sold 9,176.
But DisneyWar, Gross argues, will “rescue the boardroom drama,” selling like its predecessors couldn’t. How and Why? Uhhh … You weren’t supposed to ask. Gross reserves one tiny paragraph for the argument, and it reads like the end of a college student’s all-nighter: So, any boardroom narrative today faces a host of obstacles. But if anyone can bust on to the bestseller lists despite them, it’s Stewart …
Related Reading:
–“‘DisneyWar’ rushed to stores,” Variety
–“A Tale of Treachery in the Magic Kingdom,” Janet Maslin’s NYT review
–“Tempers flare over ‘DisneyWar,'” FT.com via MSNBC
Correction (March 10): According to Alec Klein, S&S sold over 20,000 copies of his book, Stealing Time: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Collapse of AOL Time Warner. No word yet on how Gross Trimspa’d Klein’s sales numbers so dramatically.