I tapped my source one last time for book sales figures for “The Age of Autism” and “Callous Disregard”. The Age of Autism was written by Mark Blaxill (board member of SafeMinds and one of the three principle editors of the blog, Age of Autism) and Dan Olmsted (former UPI editor, principle editor and, from what I can tell, owner of the Age of Autism blog). Callous Disregard is Andrew Wakefield’s account of the events which landed him before the General Medical Council and resulted in him being removed from the UK medical register.
Total book sales to date:
Age of Autism: 2301
Callous Disregard: 2925
Last week five copies of Callous Disregard were sold.
Last week The Age of Autism sold 130 copies–38 in Minneapolis St. Paul and 35 in Norfolk, Virginia. This appears to coincide with book signing events in those locations. The week before that, The Age of Autism sold 57 copies.
These figures must be disappointing. If not to the authors, to the publishers.
I may post an update with this week’s book sales. Either way, there isn’t much reason to continue the discussion of these books. When they are available in the remainder book outlets (with this few sales, there won’t be a lot of used copies and little chance for paperback editions) I will likely obtain copies of each. I’ve already read them, but they are interesting from a historical perspective. It will be a good exercise to see how these books read ten years from now. If history is kind to these authors, it will be by neglecting them.
What a shame.
That anyone bought it at all.
That means not even half the families in the autism omnibus case bought a copy. It doesn’t surprise me, since the vast majority were just giving the whole thing a bit of a spin, and never really believed in the cases in the first place. But the authors must be devastated.
I feel for them.
At 15% of the cover price, Blaxhill and Olmsted would split $9660.00 in royalties. They may have made a bit more if they got a decent advance. The publisher might still eke out a very small profit depending on how many copies it printed and how heavily they discounted off list price. But clearly, this is not going to become a paperback.
This week’s figures are in–
Callous Disregard sold 7 copies
The Age of Autism sold 47 copies
Amazon has Age of Autism marked down from $27.99 to $18.47; Callous Disregard is selling for $16.90, down from $26.95 (a 37% savings!).
Having read parts of both books, I won’t be adding them to my library until the booksellers are paying me to take them off their hands. And maybe not even then. If I want to read poorly-written tripe, I can always buy a copy of The National Enquirer for $3.49 and afterwards use it to line my bird’s cage.
Prometheus
Prometheus,
other sellers have The Age of Autism down to $12.70 and Callous Disregard down to $8.95.
At some point, when they hit the $1 range, I will consider adding it to an order. Evidence of Harm is $0.99 used now. It is still in the $7 range new. I recall having seen it much lower in the past.
I’ve already spent the real cost of these books–my own time reading them. At least I didn’t spend 5 years to write it, as with Age of Autism.
My city library has five copies of Age of Autism, but only two are checked out. It has no copies of Callous Disregard. The larger county library system also has five copies of Age of Autism, with four checked out. Plus the county library has five copies of Callous Disregard, but only one is checked out.
Do the sales data above in the article reflect direct sales to libraries? It does look like I might be able to get a copy of Age of Autism from the twice a year library foundation sale for fifty cents… though I think that would be too much.
Meanwhile, for purposes of comparison, I sold about 20 kindle ebooks last month, almost all “Walking Dead”, though there were five returns, and this month, there have been five sales of “Walking Dead”. That would mean that “Walking Dead”, with no marketing whatsoever (unless it’s the TV show with the same name), is selling at close to the numbers of Wakefield’s book. Woo hoo!