Right-wing rock starGov. Scott Walker has sold a shockingly few 16,000 copies of Unintimidated, his “insider’s view” of his public union busting. Sorry—"a governor's story and a nation's challenge."
Turns out that Walkeris a bad investment and his presidential backers should be worried. Maybe hecan deliver for them in Wisconsin—where his only meaningful opposition comesfrom members of his own party, thanks to gerrymandering—but his book sales show that he has a lot to provenationally.
Let’s start with thefinancial stuff. Buzzfeed reported that Walker’s advance was at least $340,000.Walker didn’t pocket all of that, of course.
Agents usually earn15% right off the top; in this case, $51,000. Celebrity writers can set upvarious types of pay structures with their co-writer (Marc Thiessen) orghost-writer. It could have been a work for hire, with a set amount of pay forThiessen; a percentage of the advance; a fee for writing the proposal plus acertain amount for writing the book; or a percentage of the advance or set feeplus a percentage of royalties once the advance earns out.
(A bit ofself-disclosure here: I had a fairly long career in publishing prior to joiningthe Shepherd. I started as anassistant literary agent in New York, then worked various jobs withinpublishing, including co-authoring three books, ghost writing others, editing,book doctoring, marketing, book proposal coaching and more. So I know a bitabout publishing from all angles.)
Let’s say that Walkerand his coauthor, Marc Thiessen, split what remained after the agent’s cut,which leaves $144,500 for each man. Walker and Thiessen could have developed adifferent compensation structure, of course. We’ll never know, but I’ll assumethat Thiessen, a big name in right-wing circles who likely raised Walker’sprofile with publishers, pocketed six figures.
Moving beyond thebook deal to the actual book, which I read—at least, I’ve read as much as Icould stomach—just the concept of Unintimidated should have given publisherspause. And Walker’s crappy book sales could have been predicted from theoutset:
- Walker doesn’t havea profile outside of Wisconsin. It would be interesting to find out thelocation of Walker’s readers. I’m going to assume that 90% of them are local.Although local media and residents are consumed with anything to do with theguy, he barely registers outside of the state (except with his billionairebenefactors). Think about recent straw polls among conservatives: Walkergenerates barely a blip. Even though he’s a regular on Fox, Walker’s“charisma-free” persona just doesn’t make anyone want to know anything moreabout him.
- Walker doesn’t havea compelling personal story. Think about some of the most successful politicalbios—Obama’s Dreams From My Father comes to mind. Now, that book wasn’t political.It was utterly personal. I learned a ton aboutObama from that book, and was hooked by how unique he really is. Now, thinkabout Walker. What do you know about the guy? He’s married with two sons. He’sworked in government his whole life (although he really blows out of proportionhis experience at IBM, which amounted to selling computer warranties for a verybrief period of time). He’s an Eagle Scout. He worships Ronald Reagan. Andthat’s it. Unintimidated sheds no new light on his story. There’s no there,there.
- Walker doesn’tunderstand the private sector. Funny how news of his dismal book sales—his oneattempt to dip his toe into the private sector after decades of living on thetaxpayers’ dime—comes on the heels of yet another dismal jobs report. Walkerjust doesn’t get what sells, what makes something attractive to a consumer orinvestor. He only understands government. And only from a limitedperspective.
- The Act 10 battlehas already been reported—ad nauseam. It blanketed the local and nationalairwaves, juiced the blogs, and was all over talk radio. Walker shed no newlight on the battle over his most controversial bill. And the little bit of newinformation he did manage to reveal wasn’t all that interesting. I mean, he hadto negotiate with GOP legislators, who were only interested in passing a“nuclear-lite” bill to destroy unions. His behind-the-scenes stories of living throughincredible political strife turned out to be fabrications or just plain dull toanyone but the most serious wonks.
- Walker sees theworld in black-and-white terms, and that sort of binary thinking just doesn’tcreate a compelling story. Walker may be “unintimidated,” but by whom? Hedidn’t have to deal with unions or Democrats, whom he smears throughout the book.He only had to (and still has to) negotiate with Republicans, who had enoughnumbers to pass whatever Walker wanted. Combined with really simplisticwriting, Walker’s political vision is about as enlightening as a Snapple cap.(Apologies to Snapple.)
- The title sucks. Talk about an unforced error.
Buzzfeed’s piece isabout the demise of conservative book publishing, which used to boost majorpublishers’ bottom lines and turn small niche publishers into money machines while providing politicians with an air of gravitas (and giving them something to sell).But Walker’s book sales show that Walker isn’t much of a rock star outside ofWisconsin, Fox News studios and meet-and-greets with small-government donors.He’s going to have to radically reinvent himself if he wants to sell himselfbeyond Wisconsin’s borders. Who knows? Perhaps he isn’t serious about runningfor president—he just likes the perks that come along with pretending to runfor president. And pretending to be a big-time author.
