Boris Johnson’s Unleashed ‘memoir’. There’s no success like failure
Boris Johnson’s memoir officially called Unleashed was released on 10th October 2024 and sold just under 43,000 in its first week making it the best-selling ‘non-fiction’ hardback in that week. Decent sales but well below the memoirs of Thatcher and Blair.
In its second week sales declined by 62% and while the book retained top slot it was just 133 copies ahead of Tim Spector’s The Food for Life Cookbook.
Third week sales were 8,370 and the book was down to 4th in the best sellers list. Top slot was some drivel from Jeremy Clarkson. Johnson was reportedly booted off Channel 4’s US Election Night programme on 5th November for repeatedly trying to plug the book
Johnson was paid a reported £2 million suggesting that the publishers Harper Collins expected it to be a Christmas best seller akin to Prince Harry’s memoir which sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
The Top 50 best selling books for 2024 list is now out (Sunday Times 22nd December) and Johnson’s book is not in it. It has sold 110,000 copies spending nine weeks in the best seller lists leaving it around 7,000 copies short of making the Top 50. In short the book like Johnson himself is a dud.
There’s no success like failure
Leave a Reply