MEDIA BOOKS BOMB AS TINA BROWN’S VANITY FAIR DIARIES, JANN WENNER UNAUTHORIZED BIO DISAPPOINT:

The big surprise is Tina Brown’s “Vanity Fair Diaries.” Released a month ago, the Diaries have failed to attract much interest from anyone other than maybe Tina’s former assistants. Total sales according to Book Scan as of December 3rd are a miserable 6,200.

Brown, who edited Vanity Fair from 1983 to 1992, is thought to have received at least a $200,000 advance. It’s notable that her book was published by Henry Holt and not Random House or Knopf. But still…Holt, part of McMillan, will wind up eating whatever was advanced. Brown’s publisher told the NY Post back in October that they were pumping out 100,000 first printing, so that could mean 94,000 copies are heading to the Strand Book Store soon.

The other book that got a lot of attention but failed to drum up business was Joe Hagan’s well reviewed biography of Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner. “Sticky Fingers,” released October 1st, has sold just 13,200 copies according to BookScan. While Hagan’s reporting was praised, it may be that Mr. and Mrs. America wasn’t so interested in Wenner’s escapades screwing over rock stars. Plus, he’d already been given the bio treatment years ago– when Rolling Stone was still popular– by Robert Draper. I didn’t understand why this was done again.

I’m surprised to see disappointing sales for Sticky Fingers given the hype the book received, the readability of the finished project, and how influential Wenner has been to rock & roll. While Wenner wrote comparatively few of the actual reviews in his magazine, the vast majority of them over the magazine’s 50 year history reflect his tastes (for better, and often for worse). For all intents and purposes, Wenner is the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominating committee, in case you’re wondering why your favorite veteran act still hasn’t gotten in. Rolling Stone the magazine is definitely Wenner, in the same sense that Fox News was Roger Ailes. That and the timing of the publication of the Wenner bio to coincide with the fall of Harvey Weinstein and the concurrent “pervnado” (a fortuitous bit of synchronicity) makes Hagan’s book a really fascinating read to understand how pop culture and the media arrived at this point in time, as I wrote over the weekend in my lengthy review at Ed Driscoll.com.