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Sales of Boris Johnson’s political memoir are understood to have slumped well below expectations, with the much-advertised release now on track to be overtaken by a cookbook.
Despite an apparent £2m advance on the 784-page account of his time in Downing Street, Unleashed only managed to sell 42,528 copies in its opening week, far fewer than his publishers, HarperCollins, had likely predicted.
The former prime minister suffered a 62 per cent reduction in his sales lead this week, narrowly managing to cling onto the number one spot, selling just 133 more copies than Tim Spector’s The Food for Life Cookbook.
Mr Johnson’s sales figures fall far short of predecessors Margaret Thatcher, who sold an estimated 120,000 copies upon the release of her 1993 memoir, and Tony Blair, who sold 92,000 copies in the first week of his.
Despite the barrage of press attention, the book’s lacklustre reception has reportedly left shops with “piles and piles” of copies, and sales figures are likely to continue to plummet.
Speaking on his podcast The Rest Is Entertainment, Richard Osman said: “Well, we said last week that Blair sold 92,000, Thatcher sold 120,000, that Mr Johnson had had a £2m advance, so he would need to sell probably nearer that Thatcher figure.
“HarperCollins thought he was going to do Prince Harry numbers, and he [Harry] sold 450,000 in his first week, and he [Mr Johnson] sold 42,000, which is so far below any of the expectations they would have had. They have overpaid massively.”
“Talking to certain booksellers, there is a lot of stock in the shops. One of the things you do [is] you send out a lot of stock. If you’ve got a book you think is going to sell a lot, you send out a lot and there are piles and piles of that book in different bookshops around the country.”
He added: “A lot of people would kill for 42,000 books, but [it’s] almost impossible not to sell that many when he’s had that many free adverts on things and he’s very, very famous. But yeah, that’s the Christmas bonuses at HarperCollins gone.”
His podcast co-host, Marina Hyde, added: “I told you that one mega central London Waterstones said to me, we sold two yesterday. I see they’ve spun it as a triumph.”
Mr Johnson’s publishers seemed outwardly pleased with the sales, posting to social media: “We are thrilled that Boris Johnson’s Unleashed is the bestselling book in the UK this week!”
In the book, Mr Johnson detailed a series of bizarre anecdotes, including the claim that he had been the one to try and persuade Prince Harry to remain a frontline royal, and his consideration of a military “raid” on the Netherlands to seize Covid vaccines.
Unleashed received a mixed critical reception, with pictures emerging on social media of copies placed in fiction sections of stores or next to books such as Surrounded by Liars and Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson.
The Independent gave the insipid tell-all just one star out of five, describing it as “shameless and predictable”.
Meanwhile, recent polling carried out by YouGov reflects the public perception of the book’s claims. Just 35 per cent said they believed that former prime minister David Cameron had warned Mr Johnson he would “f*** you up forever” if he did not support Remain during the Brexit referendum, and only a quarter believed his claims about giving Prince Harry a pep talk.
There was a slight silver lining for Mr Johnson, however. Despite the disappointing return, he still managed to outsell his successor, Liz Truss, whose book about her 49-day stint as PM sold a mighty 2,228 copies in the UK in its first week.
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