A rather unpleasant rubbing of hands in today's Daily Telegraph, reporting that sales of Pippa Middleton's party-planning book Celebrate are "as flat as last night's champers". Martin Chilton writes:
The book was 177th on the Amazon best-selling book list this morning, despite a massive publicity campaign and a £400,000 advance paid by publishers Penguin to the author and a discounted cover price, down from £25 to £12.50. The book sold just over 2000 copies in its first week, and sits below Peppa Pig's Christmas Wish in the list of top-selling books in the UK. Ah, Peppa beats Pippa.There's even worse news from Amazon's list for north America, where the 416-page book was today Number 303 in the book charts.
What he neglects to mention, however, is that the Amazon book charts are not reflective of longer term trends. He also doesn't mention that Celebrate is #7 on the current New York Times sought-after 'hardback advice and miscellaneous' chart.
We say, well done Pippa. You're offically a New York Times bestseller, girl.