Phalse Profits: Offit's Book Peaks At 8,173

By J.B. Handley

The autism organizations waiting for a donation from Paul Offit from the profits of his new book should re-calibrate their expectations. While I'm not a book publisher, I'm guessing that the profits are quickly approaching zero.

One of the many cool things about Amazon.com is that it publishes a real-time rank of every book sold on their site. Given that Offit got most of his PR over this weekend and some stories reported that today is the day his book hits the market, Amazon should be a decent proxy for sales performance.

To provide some context, when Jenny McCarthy's book, Louder than Words, launched last year, it hit the Top 3 on Amazon for a couple of days, the Top 10 for more than a week, and hung around the Top 100 for nearly a month. It also was a NY Times bestseller.

Which brings me back to Offit's new book. I tracked performance from Friday through today. Note that this data is real-time, so you may see a different number when you go to Amazon, but here is his sales rank:

Friday: 9,106
Saturday: 8,173
Sunday: 8,477
Today: 13,465

Does the fact that his book isn't selling mean he's full of shit? Well, no, not necessarily. But, it sure is fun to watch. Is his peak really 8,173? Maybe not, but it's an interesting trend line to see today's number given the PR timing.

More exciting to me was a news story I watched that aired on Saturday on the local ABC station in Philadelphia where Offit is based. Hopefully, you can watch the story for yourself HERE.

What's great about this story is the reporter actually took the time to find some parents and a doctor who disagree with Offit. You listen to two couples who claim the following: vaccines triggered their child's autism and biomedical intervention is helping them recover. Then, a doctor comes on and supports the parent’s point of view. If this is the kind of PR Offit's book generates, it's good for our kids.

Who's buying Offit's book? Did he get an advance? Did he have pre-order commitments from Pharma to make the pitch to Columbia University Press? Maybe he thought there more than a dozen NDs to buy his book, I really don't know.

What I do know is that Jenny's book, in distribution for almost a year, is currently sitting at 4,689.

JB Handley is co-founder of Generation Rescue and Editor at Large for Age of Autism.

Comments

[Raven]

Paul Offit isn't the 'celebrity' Playboy bunny alumni Jenny McCarthy is. Nor is he the vulgar comedian Ms. McCarthy is.

That so many of you here would compare celebrity with being a successful author is vaguely humourous.

Just so all of you know, it makes no sense to believe that the government would support poisoning the upcoming taxpayer base since the more people paying taxes, the better it is for the government and all government funded or supported agencies.

Give your heads a shake, people.

[anon]

According to the book In The Name Of Science by Andrew Goliszek 8 months before Paul offits Rotashield was put on the market,documents presented at an FDA advisory board showed that the Rotavirus vaccine not only increased bowel obstruction but that some infants had already died after recieving the vaccine.
Nothing short of murder

[Jim Witte]

>Did anyone notice that nearly all of the
>unfavorable ratings on this book on Amazon
>have been deleted?

There are even comments about *that*. They also say that BOTH negative and positive comments are being deleted. So, perhaps they are being "even-handed", but I'd still like to see what people say, on both sides. (Actually, I don't really care.. The instant someone says that 5 antigens is automatically better than 1000+ antigens in a wild-virus infection.. When we don't understand how 99.9 percent of the immune system.. I want to scream at the sheer arrogance of it all..)

I wonder - *who* is doing the deleting? I'm thinking not someone at Amazon itself - there are probably hundreds of "controversial" books that would "merit" such manipulation. Perhaps there is some automated system that if x number of people report a comment or something then it's reviewed by an actual human? That could be skewed very easily..

I am curious as to how he gets out of some of the questions - especially the ones about treatments.. And whether he not only dismisses such [sic] "anecdotes of successful treatment" as "just flukes", but says we should study them, or whether he also says we shouldn't even study them to see if something actually is happening (to whatever level of proof is required for the double-blind-placebo-controlled-Gold-Standard people), and figure out *why*. Does he want to cure autism, or does he have his fingers in the Prozac Pie as well?

Jim Witte

[phillysteins]

Great post. Um, I had a phunny pheeling that Ophet's book would phail. But if he can't prevail through popular support, his, em, phriends in Pharma are more likely to put their ephorts into phorce-- legislative actions, mandates, etc. The phuckers.

[Lisa Clark]

Dr.Paul Offit. GRRRR!!!! What the hell is wrong with this person? Why can't the jerk just leave well enough alone? I think I will wait until it goes into the one cent catagory like the other one did at Amazon.com. His other book about vaccination. To say that there is no link, no way , no possibility that is irresponsible. Explain my son who is sick, and has severe intestinal issues? He has vomiting, and diarreah all the time. When everyone gets the intestinal problems. Why is it that a lot of children have this in common? Now our voices are getting stronger, building to a roar that cannot be contained.

[nhokkanen]

I can't wait to see Dr. Paul G. King PhD's fisking of this book. Dr. King maintains concise attention to detail, down to using various fonts to make perfectly clear whose voice is represented in each statement.

[88 events]

Found 88 events with Vaccine is 'ROTHB5' and Patient Died

http://tinyurl.com/3xstxj

[John Stone]

4,574 Right Now

You sound a little desperate. This does not sound like a popular book - a few extra copies changing hands could cause big fluctuations in the rating. But I guess if it shot up to somewhere in the top 1,000 now, we would think there was something a little funny going on.

[4,574 right now]

I don't think it peaked out at 8,000 it's at 4,574. Maybe you could update the title each time it peaks, JB?

[Julie Swenson]

Did anyone notice that nearly all of the unfavorable ratings on this book on Amazon have been deleted?

I read a number of 1-star ratings that are now simply gone! What the heck?

[KarenAtlanta]

I'm sure every mother out there, looking for a square story on vaccines, will be racing out to buy a book authored by a Pharma-insider.
Didn't Merck publish and hand out his last book?

[Media Scholar]

It's probably one of those ghost-written gems the pharma reps leave with their clients.

Hitler wrote a book, too.

[Stagmom]

Amazon ratings are a funny thing. Just a couple of books can change the ranking dramatically. 50 books a week could have you in the 10,000 range. No big whoop. And the number is based on hourly sales. So if someone bought 10 copies of a book for a school or a meeting of the Offitian Society for the Cruelty to People with Autism, the ranking would improve.

From the NYT: "For most books, it does not take many orders to increase rankings. Knowing this, authors, publishers, even nonprofit organizations like MoveOn.org will send out e-mail blasts asking people to buy a book at a set time, or buy up copies themselves. Some authors get their friends to write reviews or even write a positive review for a rival book and mention their own title.

Breaking into Amazon’s top echelons and the “also bought” recommendations can have a viral effect. “If you crack the top 50, even if it’s only for an hour, you’re significantly higher in all categories,” said Mr. Kirchner of Ingram Publisher Services. “You could probably go online at 4 a.m. and make any book you wanted a best seller for an hour.”

Also, The NYT sales rankings mean more - but even they can be manipulated by a publisher who FEDEX's the first shipment to stores and embargoes the release date - so as many possible books sell on the very same day, thus jacking the numbers.

[curt linderman sr]

I ran into a devil vs. angel deal last friday at Barnes & Noble. One of the few times I wish my mother hadn't instilled such morals in me as a child! I ended up buying the damn book because I couldn't bring myself to shop lift it.
I'll be doing a critque of it on my radio show on AO radio. Then I'll be loaning it to all of those in my area that would just like to read it to understand how ignorantly these people are at defending vaccines. I'll try my damndest not to let anyone else in the area spend any money on that sumbitch!

[John Stone]

JB

I guess you probably would not have to buy many copies to get to the book to the position of 6,781. Time for the Federal Reserve to move in.

[sign lady]

After scanning the offerings on Amazon, I discovered 55 books that warn of false prophets in their titles! With this glut of books about false prophets, you have to think good and hard before you fork over $24.95 for one of them. And most people will pass on Offit's Prophets because they can get the same propaganda free of charge from their local pediatrician.

[JB]

Too funny, it's now at 6,781...up from 13,000 this morning. I'm picturing Offit ordering from his desk!

JB

[Hilary]

Anne, Merck did that with one of his others. They bought up thousands of copies, sent them to doctors practices and asked them to be put into the practice library for loan to parents.

I know, because someone in a practice told me about the letter inside the book from Merck.

So I think you are spot on.

[Jack]

Hmm, seemed like a good day to pre-order Jenny's new book. Still a week away from release and pre-order sales have it at 4,067.

[Anne Dachel]

Good points. You never know, Merck could suddenly buy up thousands of copies to hand out to doctors who have convince parents that it's safe to inject toxins into children.

Anne Dachel
Media editor