The main vehicle for idea dissemination in America is the book. It's not that people read a lot of books or anything like that, but books are a sort of credential that you are a Very Important Person. Especially if your book has footnotes. Having a best-selling book gets you onto TV. It gets you onto academickish panels, onto the radio, and into the Op-Ed pages. It gets you lavish speaking fees. And book sales are a key driver of how accessible these different public forums are to you.

For a long time, the right-wing movement, through figures like Ann Coulter and Bernie Goldberg, has pushed its toxically authoritarian ideology into public discourse through relentless marketing of these books. They have Fox News, AM radio, Newsmax and the right-wing internet, direct mail firms, and conservative book clubs. This drives up these book sales, which in turn drives the author of the book into the mainstream public airwaves. In a sort of parallel structure, corporate elites dressed up in liberalish clothing, like Tom Friedman, Peter Beinart, Alan Derschowitz, Peter Beinart, Tim Russert, Maureen Dowd, etc. have squatted in the mainstream media channels and used their constant presence on TV and on prestigious Op-Ed pages to act as the 'other side' in this fake debate, which in turn drives up their own book sales and increases lucrative speaking fees.

Genuinely liberal books have largely been ignored by a press that isn't interested in its own failures and role in the political process. This of course means that those genuinely liberal authors have not gotten the TV and radio time that movement conservatives and movement elites get on a consistent basis. There are exceptions, of course, but the system really does have an informal firewall against progressive political arguments.

All of this makes the work that Jennifer Nix (publisher of How Would a Patriot Act) is doing compelling, because she is taking the blogs and using them to break down this firewall by promoting books that have genuinely progressive political arguments.

Now, the proof is starting to arrive in the form of book sales. Let's look at the intellectuals emerging from the blogs versus those emerging from traditional DLC pathways. I don't have great data on book sales, so don't count the figures here as completely finalized.  They are from Nielsen Bookscan, and there are some problems with how they calculate sales.  Nevertheless, it's quite instructive to compare the sales rates and relative marketing pushes that four books have received over the last two months. All of these books came out at roughly the same time.

First is our DLC control group, The Good Fight by Peter Beinart. Beinart has been on all the major TV shows, and his book has been reviewed in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, etc. He received a $600,000 advance for his book, which means that there is a substantial marketing and promotional budget behind this product. Publishers are betting on this book's success.

By contrast, Glenn Greenwald, David Sirota, and Eric Boehlert have had much less attention for their books.  Boehlert wrote a book on a subject that is insane if you want to get your book reviewed by a largely hostile press corps; he titled his book 'Lapdogs' and aimed it at the press.  Greenwald's book sold entirely through blogs, radio and word of mouth before any 'formal' reviews happened.  Sirota, the most press savvy out of the three, has not had nearly the amount of TV attention as Beinart, and I would imagine all three have had almost a negligable amount of money put towards promotion in contrast to Beinart's book.

I've included in these stats the book title and author, the number of mentions in Google News, the number of books sold, the publication date, and the current Amazon sales ranking.  This should give us a fairly good approximation of how much attention the book has gotten and how fast it is selling.

How Would a Patriot Act? by Glenn Greenwald
9 Google news mentions
9,573 books sold
Publication date: May 15, 2006
Current sales rank: #408

Hostile Takeover by David Sirota
19 Google news mentions
10,207 books sold
Publication date: May 2, 2006
Current Amazon.com sales rank: #948

Lapdogs by Eric Boehlert  
21 Google news mentions
3,259 books sold
Publication date: May 9, 2006
Current Amazon.com sales rank: #4,858

The Good Fight by Peter Beinart
78 Google news mentions
5,645 books sold
Publication date: May 30, 2006
Current Amazon.com sales rank: #3,375

Beinart's book came out after Hostile Takeover and How Would a Patriot Act, but it is selling worse at this point than either of them. The Good Fight has at least four times as many Google News mentions as either competitor, and while I don't have a clear metric, Beinart has obviously had a lot more television exposure.  And even aside from the book, Beinart's name is mentioned at least three times more often in Google News than either Sirota or Greenwald.

What does this mean?  I'm not sure.  Certainly, Lapdogs hasn't sold as many copies as Beinart's book, though if you take into account Beinart's fourfold advantage in media appearances in print (and much greater advantage in TV appearances), it's surprising Lapdogs isn't being blown out of the water instead of selling approximately 60% of what The Good Fight did.

There are a couple of possible conclusions here.  One, neoconservative books by self-hating liberals aren't popular anymore.  Two, the blogosphere is a more important sales vehicle for books (and therefore ideas) than the traditional reviewer cartel.  Three, movement liberals are beginning to thirst for ideas, and the internet is providing a place for emerging writers to work them into longer form.

In terms of conclusion one, there's little doubt that self-hating liberalish authors who spout neoconservative ideas are on a dead path. Kevin Phillips, whose book has sold very well by using the same mixture of traditional TV appearances, print reviews, and blogging as Beinart did, is doing very well. Beinart's The Good Fight? Not so much. I'm not sure about number conclusions two and number three, though something is going on in the blogs to sell more books and satisfy a liberal yearning for longer form works.  There's clearly some transference of authority from a top-down corporate press corps to more democratic markets for ideas.  How much is not clear, since it's not like these are the Da Vinci Code numbers, but the fact that the DC press is shocked by what's going on in Connecticut and the blogs aren't suggests that the blogs are more in touch with popular sentiment.  So I guess I'm saying that these sales numbers aren't a surprise.  And next time, publishers should give their $600,000 advances to Glenn Greenwald, David Sirota, or Eric Boehlert, and media bookers should book them on their shows.