Drudge: 'Progressive' Media Stalls

Matt Drudge reports that Air America Radio has been failing in New York of all places. Also, "Crashing the Gate," the book made by the creator of the liberal Daily Kos ("the most read blog on the internet," as he states), has only sold 2,062 copies in book stores.

Left-leaning new media has hit turbulence at the marketplace, newly released stats show.

A book hyped by major media as documenting a progressive revolution of "blogs" and political power, DAILY KOS 'CRASHING THE GATE,' has sold only 3,630 copies since its release last month, according to NIELSEN's BOOKSCAN.

[NIELSEN claims only 2,062 copies of DAILY KOS have been purchased at the retail level; the rest coming through 'discount' outlets.]

Meanwhile, the just released radio Winter Book [Jan-Mar 2006] from ARBITRON shows AIR AMERICA in New York City losing more than a third of its audience -- in the past year!

Among all listeners 12+, it was a race to the bottom for AIR AMERICA and WLIB as mid-days went from a 1.6 share during winter 2005 to a 1.0 share winter 2006.

During PM drive, host Randi Rhodes plunged to 27,900 listeners every quarter hour, finishing 25th place in her time slot, down from 60,900 listeners every quarter hour in the fall.

I wrote a review of "Crashing the Gate" (I didn't buy the thing, fortunately) earlier this month.

In the book it's surprising to learn that Ann Coulter admits conservatives now control the media and that Free Republic is a "web publication." It also should be news that "conservative talk radio stagnates" while Air America Radio flourishes.

Daily Kos of course won't take Drudge's story lying down.

What's a poor partisan hack like Drudge to do with his idols running the country and Iraq into the ground? Aha! Claim that some book isn't doing so hot.

Bookscan just surveys a sampling of big box retailers, so it's not a complete market analysis. Merely a snapshot of major retailers (and not even all of them). And it absolutely fails to capture online sales.

So let's see. The book has been out three weeks. It has sold 5,100 copies of the special edition and 3,630 according to Drudge (if he can be trusted) in a sampling of the big box bookstores.

That's 8,730 right there. Now throw in the indy bookstores (we've probably sold close to 1,000 just in the book signing events I've attended), and we're getting close to 10,000.

Then there's the online retailers. Currently, CTG is ranked #25 on Amazon.com, and is ranked #5 in the politics category. Through the links at the top of the this page alone I've sold 700 copies of CTG.

So to recap -- top ranking on Amazon, over 10,000 copies sold in three weeks the book has been out. Distributors have ordered 50,000 copies of the book, which has gone through three printings already (our small publisher can't afford to do large first printings). And we're just halfway through our book tour.

And this is somehow supposed to be a failure?

Like I said, pity poor Drudge. He has really resorted to grasping at straws. The Right has so little going for it, that it's been reduced to desperately wishing this book fails.

Funny, actually.

(p.s. Notice how Drudge doesn't give stats for Glenn Reynold's or Hugh Hewitt's books?)