Does anyone think that Matt Goodwin’s book on the demise of Britain is a publicity stunt? I mean, besides him | Marina Hyde

‘Syou have produced a bestseller!” sighed the Watcher. “Liz Truss’ new book is out in less than 72 hours and has already sold out on Amazon.” Thus began the widely held opinion of the British press that the PM of 45 days was once again inciting the public with his 2024 book Ten Years to Save the West. Ultimately, Truss’ book sold 2,228 copies in the UK in its first week, which placed it at No 70 in the “best-seller” charts. By the next week it was back at 223, comfortably eclipsed by any number of cookbooks, novels, self-help articles and stickbooks, none of which enjoyed its publishing status. You hear a lot about the visions of AI, but instead, it reduces the views of the journalists themselves.

So, then, to be outraged by the new book of the academic candidate / the late Matt Goodwin, which I find at least as important for our culture as the court battle between Gwyneth Paltrow and – I think? – a retired optometrist, who accidentally ran into him.

Goodwin signed up a book called National Suicide: Immigration, Islam, Identity, and Politics writer Andy Twelves has made his case that this book may be assisted by AI, as it contains various imaginary texts from philosophers and links to ChatGPT in some footnotes and so on. One of them challenged the other to a GB News interview, which was won by the Twelves. But again with Goodwin, since we live in a post-sham political culture and you really couldn’t buy this level of publicity for a sub-mediocre nonfiction book in its release week. No gentleman wears their victory lightly, let’s say. But we live in click wars and the various hustles made a fun game while we wait for the petrol wars to start.

Goodwin writes cleverly on this phenomenon that strengthens his position in a surprising way, and the method he chooses is to suggest that his book is a real event of publication. (He also said he only used AI for research purposes.) But let’s get down to brass tacks, because there are only so many self-respecting posts about this so-called cultural juggernaut that I can figure out before I have to ask the Comments desk if I can submit my column later than usual so we can look at the confirmed sales figures when they come down. Guys, come on in – and the second half of this column is for paid subscribers only. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Welcome, everyone; enjoy the numbers.

To hear Matt tell it, this book was taken by a veritable army of “people”. For liberals/leftists/whoever, he writes that their “greatest fear is being realised” because the book is “the second biggest book in Britain”. Hmmm. I know you can’t say Easter in this country anymore, but at the time of typing this paragraph, 11 of the top 20 books on Amazon UK were children’s Easter books. Goodwin was on Monday night pushing the picture into the top three of the Amazon UK bestseller chart, with his book slotted in at No 2, between Fluffy Chick: A Touch and Feel Book and a period novel about an illegal alien (Paddington’s Easter Egg Hunt). As Matt said: “I’ve never seen anything like this.” You’ve never seen such a thing as the second coming of something? It’s strange, because I heard you had a–just last month. However, Goodwin also relied on the “hot new chart” of Kindle, perhaps because at the time, it was No 47 on the actual Kindle chart. Listen, you can make a lot of statistics seem to say a lot of different things.

In fact, most people will have noticed that authors write something along the lines of: “OMG I can’t believe I’m not No. 3 on the Amazon Military Hardware and Bitcoin Numismatics chart! Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that good old Amazon wants to help authors push books, but most of these esoteric charts are equivalent to participation awards.

Also, can I say that March is a month without competition to release a book? If Matt really wanted to measure the emotional strength of his proposal, he would announce in September or October, and see how he fares against the big, strong players. Yes, I include airfryer books in that.

Of course, some books are so big that the release date doesn’t matter. The Spectator article about Truss’s literary stature went on to sniff: “Prince Harry may be dismayed to see his book, Spare, even further down the biography chart at, um, 91^St place.” Bless that “um”. Yes, I think Prince Harry would probably have been okay with the fact that, despite it being a January release, his title was the fastest selling non-fiction title of all time, selling 3.2m copies in its first week – 467,000 here in the UK alone. A Matt Goodwin-esque inclusion of the statistic means that Harry was the equivalent of 200 Liz Trusses and, by popular demand, would have replaced Rishi Sunak as prime minister. Don’t ever worry about Harry’s royal titles – he should have the clear words “The PM They Tried to Block”.

Finally, in a broken culture, there is always more than one way to pierce the fabric. Given that Truss only took £1,512 up front, you could argue that as an investment his book was no more disappointing a business than, say, Boris Johnson’s. Because of the publisher’s return compared to the return, BoJo was like a big Hollywood hit, even if it sold a lot of copies. Matt Goodwin’s acclaimed effort equals small-budget indie horror.

Sorry, those are real stats, according to the official book sales tracker NielsenIQ BookScan. In its first week of sales, in a week where the No 1 book sold 33,000 copies, Suicide Squad sold 5,539, making it this week’s No 20. It’s a hell of a lot less than The Dinosaur That Pooped Easter, but you can’t have them all.

• Marina Hyde is a reporter for the Guardian

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