By Noel Towell and Kishor Napier-Raman
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, now it looks like ScoMo might need some help from on high for the underwhelming local sales of his memoir.
Scott Morrison says his prayers.Credit: John Shakespeare
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 that the man dubbed “Scotty from Marketing” had not lost his touch.
So you’d think after the free plugs in print and on TV, radio and online, copies of the thing would be flying off the shelves, right?
Well, the chatter among publishing types is that the book has been a flop in mainstream Australian retail and online outlets, and that 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, during those seven days, 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.
But both local publisher HarperCollins and US distributor W Publishing 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,” said W’s vice president Damon Reiss.
Morrison was certainly clear that he was targeting the billion-dollar evangelical book market in the US, where the former PM has been working hard promoting his book.
Morrison’s post-parliamentary life as an author is not off to a commercially strong start, at least in this country.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
It’s also likely that sales through specialist evangelist booksellers might be flying under the radar, but neither publisher offered any detail on that side of things, 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.
MAGICAL LAW
Staying with literary matters for now, the Supreme Court of Victoria might be well advised to brace for an influx of fans of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books on Tuesday, after an intriguing case was listed by the court on Monday afternoon.
It seems certain that CBD wasn’t alone in noticing the matter of Ginny Weasley versus Albus Dumbledore (part heard) listed for trial in courtroom number 1 at 10am.
For strangers to Rowling’s magical world, and all you muggles out there, Weasley is the younger sister of Harry Potter’s best mate Ron Weasley, with the young witch later becoming the famous boy wizard’s love interest. Dumbledore, meanwhile, is Potter’s mentor and headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Hell, we were even going to rock up to court this morning after reading that listing, not least to see if an application to join the Ministry of Magic as a party to proceedings would be made.
But then a spinner from the court broke the spell.
“Unfortunately it’s not a real case,” they told us. “It was part of system testing and training that slipped through the net.”
Never mind, we still believe that magic happens.
TORY TIME
It’s election season over in the land of Pom, and this time, we doubt even an army of Lynton Crosby clones or a hare-brained pledge to reintroduce national service will be enough to save Rishi Sunak’s Tories, down 20 points in the polls to Labour.
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 claimed his life’s work was “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.
But one Australian who remains beloved among the Tory right is former Neighbours star Holly Valance, born again as an anti-woke conservative with Donald Trump and Nigel Farage on speed dial.
According to a recent Sunday Times article, Valance was so influential among the Tories that she was instrumental in helping secure a free trade agreement between the UK and Australia in 2021.
Meanwhile, even former Howard-era foreign minister and high commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer, who became a bit of a Conservative Party grandee in recent years, has walked away from the Sunak government.
According to the foreign influence transparency register, Downer ceased his engagement with the UK Home Office, for whom he’d been doing consulting work on how to stop the boats.
So it looks like both sides of Australian politics might have read the writing on the wall for the Tories.
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