Going Broke (Update)
This is great. Is there such a thing as too much Palin?
From Media Matters:
Sarah Palin’s memoir Going Rogue: An American Life has garnered attention in part because of the number of copies sold before publication. But the book has been offered at below-cost prices from major online retailers, and Newsmax has used the book as a loss leader to promote its magazine, potentially inflating the book’s sales.
Walmart.com dropped price from list price of $28.99 to $10, then to $9 and below as other retailers matched it. On October 15, Walmart.com began offering preorders of Going Rogue, along with nine other new book releases, for $10. After Amazon.com reportedly matched the price, Walmart.com “struck back, slashing its prices to $9″ [AOL Daily Finance, 10/16/09]. Amazon also dropped its price to $9 [Buzzflash.com, 10/19/09]. Target.com joined in the price war, prompting Walmart.com to drop its price further [The New Yorker, 11/9/09]. By November 5, Walmart.com was selling the book for $8.98, Target.com was selling it for $8.99, and Amazon was selling it for $9. The respective retailers were still selling the book at those prices as of November 16. All three retailers give the book’s list price as $28.99. Screen shots of the November 5 prices are below:
Update: At least something good is coming from the former governor’s book. Media Matters and the Progressive Book Club have teamed up to combat misinformation.
Today Progressive Book Club and Media Matters for America announces the launch of Right-Wing Book Watch (RightWingBookWatch.com) – a new joint project that will monitor the release of conservative books and provide detailed fact checks, research and thematic rebuttals from progressive experts.
First in the project’s sights is former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s memoir Going Rogue: An American Life, which hits bookshelves across the country today.
Despite enormous advances in technology, books continue to serve as the primary means to legitimize political and policy ideas. Under the guise of “non-fiction,” conservatives use books to force misinformation into the media and the public discourse.
These books can be devastating to good policy and decent political discourse – as illustrated by such notorious examples as The Bell Curve, which misused data to resuscitate racialist ideas about intelligence, and Unfit for Command, the “Swift Boat” fraud that smeared Senator John Kerry.
