3,000 Copies

Are books dead or just sleeping?

Author Lindy West’s new memoir, Adult Braces, has generated a great deal of discourse. There were pieces in The Atlantic (two, in fact), the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, New York Magazine, and … really, the Wall Street Journal?

I haven’t formally contributed to the discourse here because I don’t have much to offer. I think writer Leigh Stein’s piece best sums up my own thoughts: “This is a 300-page voyage of zero discoveries. It’s an addiction memoir that doesn’t end in sobriety. It’s a cult memoir that ends with a spirited defense of the cult leader.”

However, for its near omnipresence in media, Adult Braces is hardly what you’d call a best seller. Jasmine Vojdani at New York Book Gossip (is there anything more exciting?) writes, “What’s undeniable is that a lot more people have opinions about West’s personal life than have bought her book. According to BookScan — the leading industry tracker that captures mostly print sales and with a week or so delay — total Adult Braces sales stand, as of this writing, at just over 3,000 copies. It is generally believed that authors need to sell between 5,000 and 10,000 the first week to make the New York Times’ best-seller list; West sold only 1,800 in that time.”

So, all these “words, words, words” were written about a book most people have not read. Perhaps we all assumed that there was more of an audience for a millennial feminist memoir that reads as if it were written at the start of this millennium. I’m sure no one expected Adult Braces would sell like Twilight or feature more interesting characters, but I think my 12-year-old son’s upcoming fantasy novel will move more than 3,000 copies in a month. (He’s very determined: He’d go door-to-door in our neighborhood, and my wife and I would have to hit up our colleagues. It would be like literary Girl Scout cookies.)

If I somewhat rashly assumed that more people were reading the book so many people were discussing, it’s because I came of age at a time when people not only bought books but the media only really covered authors who wrote books people read.

When I was growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, I read a lot of Stephen King and, of course, my beloved VC Andrews, who was herself a living gothic novel. But I was especially drawn to Lewis Grizzard because he’d become a national figure as a newspaper columnist. (I even went to the University of Georgia because that’s where he studied journalism.) Yes, his politics openly shifted hard right in the early 1990s (a common development for white male Boomers), but in his early work, he praised fellow Georgia native Jimmy Carter and described Ronald Reagan as “nearly as old as baseball.” He was not a fan of Nancy Reagan, who he considered “snooty.”

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Grizzard’s column for the Atlanta Constitution was syndicated in 450 newspapers, back when people read newspapers every day. This was an audience of millions, and the books that collected Grizzard’s columns were legitimate best sellers: 1979’s Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You: A Good Beer Joint Is Hard to Find and Other Facts of Life (his titles were famously long-winded and this parenthetical explanation hasn’t helped) sold 75,000 copies in its first week. His humorous account of surviving open heart surgery, They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat, sold 100,000 copies when it was released in 1982.

I’m not directly comparing Grizzard and West, as they are like apples and something that isn’t apples. I’m more interested in how today’s media exists in an increasingly shrinking bubble. Consider that The Atlantic has 1.5 million subscribers but published two in-depth features about Adult Braces, a book 3,000 people have bothered to purchase (and fewer will likely read, based on the Second Law Of Conspicuous Book Consumption). The Wall Street Journal has 412,000 print subscribers and 4.13 million digitial subscribers. The New York Times has 570,000 print subscribers and 11.3 million online subscribers. New York Magazine has 1 million email subscribers.

Surely, the assignment editors at these publications do some research into how a book is selling before approving lengthy think pieces. That’s how you avoid covering a local junior high talent show. However, it seems as if people were determining relative news value based on chatter within that tight bubble. Slate ran a profile about West and her book — which triggered an ugly response from West’s husband who everyone loathes now — that was filed under the category “Fame.” That seems like a stretch.

Helen Lewis at The Atlantic suggested that West contributed to the death of “Millennial Feminism,” but that either overstates West’s influence or the overall impact of what they call “Millennal Feminism.” Perhaps it’s like when I try to explain the difference between DC’s New 52 and DC Rebirth.

The online pile on West’s memoir has received is not as if someone broke into her house and read her diary. West produced an artistic work that has generated much discussion. That’s the business. It’s perhaps not what the author wanted, but that’s true of many artistic works that receive negative feedback. West herself has written scathing reviews of other people’s work, such as Sex and the City 2 and Love Actually. There are people who share West’s Love Actually take down every year, which I think is sad — not because I love the film but because more than 3000 people probably watch it for the first time during the holidays and enjoy it. That is what tends to endure. West has had a lot to say about creative efforts and activities other people might enjoy that she didn’t appreciate, but she titled at windmills that were objectively larger than her own work. All this fuss over Adult Braces can’t help but feel like punching down or wasting everyone’s time.

It is unfortunate that so many people are reading about and judging Lindy West’s life without actually buying the book, though. She apparently needs the money: “I feel a pressure to take care of my family, and so on this very cynical surface level, I would love for the book to be a success.”

Despite its notoriety, Adult Braces is not a success. Jack Kyono, the director of marketing at McNally Jackson, told New York Magazine, “I think it’s not long for the tables.” He sounds more like a hardboiled detective than a marketing executive. I might start using that line in casual conversation.