Steve Krakauer at Mediaite
reported CNN anchor Rick Sanchez has been on the air promoting his new book (badly titled Conventional Idiocy) – 36 times in the last three weeks. "So how did the book sell? According to numbers Mediaite obtained from Bookscan, Sanchez’ book sold 802 copies in its first week."
As of Saturday, it ranked #5,920 on Amazon and #13,287 on Barnes & Noble. Perhaps Sanchez and his publishers at Penguin didn't realize that the title doesn't sound like a critique of someone else. It sounds like "Come buy 272 pages of idiocy." That might work for a comedian, but not for an anchorman. The shot at left is actually meant as a publicity shot to promote the book, not Sanchez's lack of savvy around electric cords.
The Smoking Gun relayed that photo and their take on Sanchez's titanic ego:
Sanchez -- who can’t stop reminding viewers that he is somehow “pioneering” a new way of reporting the news by reading aloud hours-old Twitter posts -- was once the subject of a marvelous June 1991 Miami Herald profile back when he was a controversial local news anchor. Since the nearly 8000-word story by Juan Carlos Coto is, sadly, not online, we’re going to reprint some random moments of Chez.
We’ll start with Sanchez addressing his ability to extricate himself from sticky situations, which makes powerful guys swoon....
“Everybody admires it. Other men, and especially men who seem to be powerful men, I notice -- I’m talking like a dime or nickel psychologist here, if you’ll permit me -- will always come up to me and that’s always the thing they say. They admire in me the fact that I’ve been in some battles and I’ve won them.
The admiration isn't translating into book sales. Krakauer added:
Sanchez has talked about his book dozens of times during his three hours each day on CNN, but he has also shown up on American Morning to talk about it and The Situation Room. Every day last week, Ali Velshi had Sanchez on to talk about the book as well (and there was the Larry King exchange last month).
Sanchez can console himself that it could be worse (or it soon might be) MSNBC host Ed Schultz's book is now at #40,134 on Amazon.
