By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
We brought word last week that former prime minister Scott Morrison had sought to bathe his overthrow of Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal leader in a divine light. But it now looks like ScoMo might need some help from on high with the underwhelming local sales of his memoir.
The blaze of free publicity accompanying the publication of Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness, had CBD thinking the man dubbed “Scotty from Marketing” had not lost his touch.
So you’d think after that deluge of free plugs in print TV, radio and online, copies of the thing would be flying off the shelves, right?
Well, chatter among publishing types that the book has been a flop in Australian mainstream retail and online outlets, sent us searching for hard data.
The most authoritative sales index, Nielsen BookScan, is very strict about only providing its data to paying customers and made it clear to CBD that it wouldn’t be bending the rules for us.
But some friends from elsewhere in the publishing industry were kind enough to quietly share with us the numbers for the week to May 18. Plans had sold 218 copies in the 1300 Australian booksellers monitored by the global analytics giant, putting the nation’s 30th prime minister at 827th spot on Nielsen’s bestseller list for the week. Oh, and the hardback had notched-up one sale on the Nielsen index.
Scott Morrison says his prayers.Credit: John Shakespeare
Both local publisher HarperCollins and US distributor W Publishing Group pointed out to CBD that Nielsen’s figures did not cover all sales.
“BookScan numbers do not include all sales for all formats across all retailers inside or outside the US,” W’s vice president Damon Reiss said.
Morrison certainly made no secret, prior to publication, that he was targeting the massive evangelical book market in the US, worth about $1.14 billion in 2022. The former PM has been working hard promoting his book in the States, hanging out with the wreckage of the last Trump administration, and Dr Phil.
It’s also likely sales through specialist evangelical booksellers might be flying under the radar, but neither publisher offered any detail, nor did they share their own sales figures.
Oh, and there’s no point asking the main Catholic booksellers in Melbourne and Sydney how things are going with Plans. They’re not stocking it.
TORY TIME
It’s election season over in the land of Pom, and this time we doubt even an army of dead cat-wielding Lynton Crosby clones or a harebrained pledge to reintroduce national service will be enough to save Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government, which currently trails Labour by about 20 points in the polls.
And it looks like some Australian politicos have already begun voting with their feet. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who once spoke passionately about his devotion to “fighting Tories”, had little time for Sunak.
According to a copy of the Albanese’s diary obtained by former senator Rex Patrick under freedom of information, the prime minister spent two hours with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer while in London for King Charles’ coronation last year. Sunak only got a 30-minute bilateral meeting, which is the same length of time Albo spent with former Labour PM Gordon Brown. Cold.
Meanwhile, even former Howard-era foreign minister and High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer, who became a bit of a Conservative Party grandee of late, has walked away from the Sunak government. According to the foreign influence transparency register, Downer ceased his engagement with the British Home Office, for whom he’d been doing consulting work on how to stop the boats.
But one Australian who remains beloved among the Tory right is former neighbours star Holly Valance, who ruffled a few feathers with her recent “coming out” as an anti-woke conservative who has Donald Trump and Nigel Farage on speed-dial, a trajectory that makes perfect sense given she’s married to a billionaire property developer.
According to a recent Sunday Times article, Valance is so influential among the Tories that she was instrumental in helping secure a free trade agreement between the UK and Australia in 2021.
If the inevitable happens, and Starmer moves into No. 10 in July, the Albanese government will need to find a politically connected influencer of its own.
SELIG MOURNED
Former NSW Liberal president and IVE executive chairman Geoff Selig, who died this month aged just 59 while travelling in Europe, was farewelled at a memorial in Sydney surrounded by friends, family and party elder statespeople.
Former premier turned Optus executive Gladys Berejiklian gave a speech to the mourners at Doltone House, while ex-PM John Howard made an appearance. CBD’s spies also spotted state Liberal leader Mark Speakman, former premier Barry O’Farrell, outgoing Governor-General David Hurley and his wife Linda Hurley (she didn’t make anyone sing), party elder Philip Ruddock and philanthropist Tom Snow.
Selig, a close ally of former Liberal leader Brendan Nelson, led the party’s NSW division between 2005 and 2008, before dramatically resigning after factional powerbrokers blocked his proposed reforms that would have diluted their influence.