HAR-DE-HAR-HAR

From NewsMax on June 14:

According to renowned New York City literary agent Lucianne Goldberg, those fabulous book sale figures racked up by Hillary Clinton's "Living History" may turn out to be mere publishing industry hype.

...While Goldberg said her sources didn't have an accurate sales figure for Hillary's book, she put the number at "way below 200,000."

What about Simon & Schuster's million-copy initial press run? Goldberg said the figure is just public relations hype and that the first run printing was probably no more than 350,000 copies.

The longtime publishing maven explained there would be no need for Simon & Schuster to print a million books. If they needed more, "you push the button on the press and you can crank out another 50,000 in a 24-hour cycle and ship them out."

In fact, sources in the field are reporting disappointing sales for Mrs. Clinton's book, Goldberg contended...

From the Drudge Report today:

Hillary Rodham Clinton's LIVING HISTORY sold 438,701 copies in its first full week, NIELSEN's BOOKSCAN reveals.

The number represents scanned, purchased, sold and bagged copies at AMAZON, BARNES AND NOBLE, BORDER'S, COSTCO and other outlets.

Clinton showed selling power coast-to-coast, according to data.

In the Pacific zone, the former first lady scanned 100,529 copies of LIVING.

In the nation's Mid-Atlantic region, 86,618 copies were sold, with Northeast stores reporting 25,877.

Clinton was the top selling book [any format, any genre] last week, according to insiders, with runner-up, James Patterson's THE LAKE HOUSE selling 117,957 copies....

And BookScan doesn't pick up all the book sales in America -- Publishers Lunch cites a May 2002 press released that claimed BookScan at the time covered "65 percent of the US market." Even if it's 75 percent now, that suggests Hillary sold about half a million books in the first week alone.

And no, you can't sell 500,00 copies of a book in the first week if you had a 350,000-copy first printing, unless you initiated a reprint before the book hit the stores. Lucianne is wrong about that. Printers are not at publishers' beck and call -- they don't have presses sitting around idle, waiting for rush reprints that publishers may or may not request. That's why S&S is ordering a lot more books now -- they're in anticipation of sales weeks (or even months) from now.